LED power supplied by ESC BEC?

mediaguru

mediaguru

Member
On my large hexacopter I have the ESC's under the motors. The BEC wire is lifted before it reaches the flight controller (SuperX). So that means I have 5 volts available at the end of each arm. Thinking of putting my LED's on the end of perhaps 4 arms and powering them via the 5v coming out of the ESC's, since those are lifted anyway.

Any reason NOT to do this? I'd have to run a hot and ground from the ESC to the LED. Just a couple inches of wire.
 

Gary Seven

Gary Seven

Rocketman
@mediaguru Do have a link for the type of LED's you're thinking about using? Most LED's I've seen (including the ones I mounted on my F450) use 12V. I do also run 1W strobes that work off approx. 3.5V, but these are a different animal altogether.
 
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mediaguru

mediaguru

Member
I should have been a little more clear. These are 5v navigation strobe/led's. Flytron/strobon. Here's a video.
 

Old Man

Old Man

Active Member
A question you might ask yourself is what might happen to the ESC if something at the strobe feeds back to/through the ESC. Will the motors remain functioning?
 

mediaguru

mediaguru

Member
Old Man said:
A question you might ask yourself is what might happen to the ESC if something at the strobe feeds back to/through the ESC. Will the motors remain functioning?
Click to expand...

I will only take the 5v and ground. No signal wire even attached. Ever heard of anything like that happening? I did wonder if that's introducing a failure point, in that if the strobe croaks it takes out the ESC?
 

Old Man

Old Man

Active Member
I've experienced feed back through an electrical system from the charge/discharge cycle of a strobe that caused issues with avionics and signal broadcast. That was a gas engine UAV so I was concerned how similar might effect an ESC. I don't know that it would, but I also don't know that it would not. Someone in here will likely know more about that.
 

Gary Seven

Gary Seven

Rocketman
mediaguru said:
I should have been a little more clear. These are 5v navigation strobe/led's. Flytron/strobon. Here's a video.
Click to expand...
Oh wow, that's very similar to what I just mounted on my F450 about a month ago. I had started a thread some time back asking questions about this very same company. What I did in the end is mount one of these Strobon boards to my quad and wired it to control two 1W strobes on my two forward arms. http://www.flytron.com/light-systems/229-strobon-se-navigation-strobe-controller.html

It gets power directly from my Rx (requirements are 4-6 VDC) and works really well. Sorry, in my post above I said I'm running off of 3.5V. I was guessing as I had forgotten but clearly meant to say 4-6 VDC.

Anyway, I see no reason you couldn't power this up with 5VDC from your BEC. Of course you can't control the strobes from your Tx this way, but maybe that's not an issue for you?

G7
 

mediaguru

mediaguru

Member
Yeah if I do them this way the nav strobes are on all the time, which isn't necessarily bad. Only drawback I can see is if I wanted to fly at night and not have the strobes reflect off of what I might be filming or shooting. I could mount the front ones on the side instead of the very front.

I've mounted two so far, both rear.
 

mediaguru

mediaguru

Member
Okay I mounted four of them. Did mostly-hover flight for a battery and seemed to work fine. So I did a 2nd flight and did some regular moves. All good. The greens look brighter than the blues. They're not as bright as I'd hoped but still better.
 


Gary Seven

Gary Seven

Rocketman
Nice rig...she's really pretty. Hard to see your lights (even the strobes) with the bright background lighting. With my vehicle I can see my strobes clearly at 1000m at dusk. I'm sure you'll have no problems seeing your rig as well under low light or night time.

Great job!
 

Gary Seven

Gary Seven

Rocketman
mediaguru said:
Okay I mounted four of them. Did mostly-hover flight for a battery and seemed to work fine. So I did a 2nd flight and did some regular moves. All good. The greens look brighter than the blues. They're not as bright as I'd hoped but still better.
Click to expand...
Yeah, blue LCD's are a recent innovation and from what I understand very hard to make bright.
 

fltundra

fltundra

Member
I ended up getting the dimension engineering 6v bec to run my Strobons on there own after seeing a 1/2 volt drop on my telemetry log files with it plugged into the receiver powered by the SuperX every time they flash while testing them. Figure it was not a good thing to have voltage spikes on the flt. controller, or receiver powering logic circuits. Also they are a good amount brighter at 6v.
https://www.dimensionengineering.com/products/parkbec6v
 
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Gary Seven

Gary Seven

Rocketman
fltundra said:
I ended up getting the dimension engineering 6v bec to run my Strobons on there own after seeing a 1/2 volt drop on my telemetry log files with it plugged into the receiver powered by the SuperX every time they flash while testing them. Figure it was not a good thing to have voltage spikes on the flt. controller, or receiver powering logic circuits. Also they are a good amount brighter at 6v.
https://www.dimensionengineering.com/products/parkbec6v
Click to expand...
Page says "Discontinued." :oops:
 


Gary Seven

Gary Seven

Rocketman
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