Found My Distro Board Finally... Powerhungrysystems.com

3

3dheliguy

Member
Hey guys here is my distro board for an Octo I will be building. Found this board online, and Im pulling the trigger after seeing this Distro Board in action on a Skyjib with Maytech ESCs running 2826 AXI motors.

The rig was lifting upwards of 8 lbs no problem and getting almost 8 minutes of flight with there setup. I just have to say wow, I have looked for a good modular way to keep my setup from falling into the wiring harness trap.

The website is Powerhungrysystems.com, and it cost around 324 dollars witch I think is well worth it for what I have seen it do. Im not a designer and I dont own a machine shop so for you guys that dont either and dont want to mess with this kind of stuff I highly recommend this Board.

So I just wanted to share this info with all of you as I see alot of people wanting to run DJI, and Hoverfly electronics.
 


K

koolkiwikat

Member
Why not just pick up a power block used in car audio installs, bullet proof!? $325 worth of what?, dont get caught in the hype "Capable of lifting 30 pounds...", its just a piece of copper and doesnt do any lifting, expensive doesn't mean its good

Like they say...put a price on it and someone will buy it!
 
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J

jrlederer

Member
Looks to me like it is overkill in both the price (most certainly) as well as in weight. In the downtime I had while hesitating to proceed for fear of crashing due to failure of such a seemingly basic component as the PDB, I soldered up an 8 AWG solid conductor of copper they is used in buildings for ground/earth connections throughout for high current demanding scenarios and I am pretty sure that those two circles separated by thin sheet of acrylic were plenty to supply the 8 75A EScs that I had slated to use in that particular build. My first impression also leads me to feel that these sheets are prone to short circuit in weird unplanned ways. I am not sure whether thus is the case or not, but in sum if have to say to think about copying my idea for less than $5 as opposed to burning 325+tax and shipping on this product. Wasteful . YMMV but that's just my opinion. Take it or leave it.


Have a nice day to all and good luck with your build no matter which method you ultimately decide upon.

Sincerely,
Jonathan
 

FerdinandK

FerdinandK

Member
If the copper goes around it is a huge ground-loop, do not use that! It will for sure produce problems with HF-transmission. If you want to be on the save side, remove as many connectors as possible, in the best case you have only the connectors to the battery(s).

best regards

Ferdinand
 


R

R_Lefebvre

Arducopter Developer
FerdinandK said:
If the copper goes around it is a huge ground-loop, do not use that! It will for sure produce problems with HF-transmission. If you want to be on the save side, remove as many connectors as possible, in the best case you have only the connectors to the battery(s).

best regards

Ferdinand
Click to expand...

I think you've misunderstood what a "ground loop" is. It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that the ground goes through a round piece of metal. Also, the since the PDB is transmitting DC current, there is no EMF noise generated. HF or otherwise. Magnetic field yes, EMF noise no.

I've been thinking about what to do here as I am building my Octo and need to figure out the PDB soon. I was actually thinking about something almost exactly like this, only using aluminum instead of copper. The conductivity of aluminum is about 1/2 that of copper, but it is 1/3rd the weight. So the conductivity to weight of aluminum is better that copper. Our aircraft would actually benefit from aluminum wiring. It would be easy to use a hole saw to cut two disks out of aluminum sheet, and then simply use that.

I also haven't decided if I want to use bullet connectors to the PDB either. Pros and cons right?
 



FerdinandK

FerdinandK

Member
@R_Lefebvre

Of course you are the expert, but you should consider that ESC´s(8) are connected which are working with about 8-24Khz switching rate (on-off) so the magnetic field is by far not steady, a magnetic field changing at high frequency is doing what?

best regards

Ferdinand
 


R

R_Lefebvre

Arducopter Developer
FerdinandK said:
@R_Lefebvre

Of course you are the expert, but you should consider that ESC´s(8) are connected which are working with about 8-24Khz switching rate (on-off) so the magnetic field is by far not steady, a magnetic field changing at high frequency is doing what?

best regards

Ferdinand
Click to expand...

Well, that is an interesting point. But don't forget that most ESC's have input Capacitors. That will steady the flow. Regardless, we have seen no evidence of problems caused from EMF. It's the magnetic fields on the DC side that cause the real problems with compass alignment. I supposed if you mounted your GPS to the PDB that could be a problem, but other than that, I haven't seen anything.
 

Bartman

Bartman

Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
there always seem to be these discussions of interference but in the end I don't see where it ends up making a difference. tight connections, sensible wire lengths, twisting wherever possible and things seem to work just fine.
 

R

R_Lefebvre

Arducopter Developer
Bartman said:
there always seem to be these discussions of interference but in the end I don't see where it ends up making a difference. tight connections, sensible wire lengths, twisting wherever possible and things seem to work just fine.
Click to expand...

Exactly.
 

kloner

kloner

Aerial DP
to the best of my knowledge the reason you see copper used is because it can be soldered. pretty important when your limited in choices to a connecter that'll solder to it and it's material. Welding would work....... but copper is cheap and easy to work with

ferdinand, the bottom of your frame is just like that but printed with copper instead of solid blocks. if you hold up the plates in the light, you can see the coppers edge following out a solder pad. think top is positive, bottom negative, forget been a while and i don't own any to look at.
 


kloner

kloner

Aerial DP
I make antennas for fpv and not being a business, ol kloner looks around the scrap pile for each build. i tried and tried but yea, no solder on aluminum sticks. Only two metals i can get to take it is galvanized steel and copper.
 

J

jes1111

Active Member
That eye-wateringly expensive PDB also introduces 16 potential points of failure - and the way it's arranged, you can't even heat-shrink the bullets together. And the point of gold-plating the whole thing is what, exactly? Sorry, but to my mind, the ultimate example of a (poor) solution looking for a non-existent problem. :)

btw - the reason to use copper is its high conductivity (the opposite of resistivity). Aluminium is commonly used for high current bus-bars but with screw termninals. You can't solder to aluminium, per se, but you can braze using special rods like Dura-Fix.
 

ChrisViperM

ChrisViperM

Active Member
R_Lefebvre said:
I think you've misunderstood what a "ground loop" is. It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that the ground goes through a round piece of metal. Also, the since the PDB is transmitting DC current, there is no EMF noise generated. HF or otherwise. Magnetic field yes, EMF noise no.

I've been thinking about what to do here as I am building my Octo and need to figure out the PDB soon. I was actually thinking about something almost exactly like this, only using aluminum instead of copper. The conductivity of aluminum is about 1/2 that of copper, but it is 1/3rd the weight. So the conductivity to weight of aluminum is better that copper. Our aircraft would actually benefit from aluminum wiring. It would be easy to use a hole saw to cut two disks out of aluminum sheet, and then simply use that.

I also haven't decided if I want to use bullet connectors to the PDB either. Pros and cons right?
Click to expand...

The idea of using Alu is good, but the biggest ***** in joining metals together is aluminium. Even soldering/brazing Alu to Alu is such a pain, and Alu to Copper is almost impossible. In my company we weld, solder and braze almost all metals, but if a customers comes up with aluminium, we just duck and dive. One of the few possibilities is to get the Aluminium galvanized/gold plated before you can join the cables with a normal soldering iron (I guess you don't want to fiddle around on your rig with a proper torch). Another way I have found is seen on the following vid, but dunno anything how practical it is to solder 2x 8 wires or how well it will hold together.


The easiest would be to have two copper bars ~ 8mm x 8mm and maybe 60mm long (1x for plus + 1x for minus), drill a few holes into the bar and solder the cables into the holes. But to my taste the should be some sort of plastic cover with cutouts for the cables...I hate nothing more than having bare power lines on my bird....
PS: why does a PDB always have to be round....?

Chris
 
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kloner

kloner

Aerial DP
why does alot of stuff use gold plating, for conductivity or to make it solderable? you see that from time to time in a description of an electronic part or piece
 

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