Questions for the builders out there...

[theGreenOrange]

What is a smoke stopper?

 

[Jtrjr]

Green,

It's a home made device to make sure you don't smoke your new build when you first apply power to it.

Jerry

 

[Danny Z]

Jerry,
Call me
Danny Z

 

[theGreenOrange]

Jerry, that could just be the capacitor charging up. Give it a second to dim and go out.

 

[Jtrjr]

Green,

Okay, I left it plugged in for about 2 minutes and the light stays lit. It's one element and it's pretty dim, so it's not much juice. When I use the meter on the positive and negative posts of the XT-60 with no power the meter goes way up and then starts coming down and settles in the 40 range. The video below shows it sped up, it actually takes about 3 minutes to do this.

Jerry

 

[Jtrjr]

New wrinkle, I just tried my smoke-stopper on 3 of my other birds and it lights up on all of them. I think it's back to the drawing board on the smoke-stopper!

Jerry

 

[theGreenOrange]

More like a heart stopper.

 

[theGreenOrange]

Green,

Okay, I left it plugged in for about 2 minutes and the light stays lit. It's one element and it's pretty dim, so it's not much juice. When I use the meter on the positive and negative posts of the XT-60 with no power the meter goes way up and then starts coming down and settles in the 40 range. The video below shows it sped up, it actually takes about 3 minutes to do this.

Jerry

That seems ok, just the capacitor charging probably.

 

[Jtrjr]

I got her going now. All looks good, got everything working as it should. Hoping to solder up motors, mount camera and start buttoning up the rest today. Thanks for the help.

Jerry

 

[PhoenixFord]

Green,

It's a home made device to make sure you don't smoke your new build when you first apply power to it.

Jerry

I've been using this trick to troubleshoot groundfault circuits for a long time. I have a home made device for use on 120V circuits using a standard incandescent light bulb.

 

[Serius]

What is a smoke stopper?

Ohh ****, I just now posted this in another thread. sorry for the redundancy

 

[Serius]

Yeah, I'll most likely be using pins as well but I can't use them for the ESC's so I'd like to at least use bullet connectors for them (I'll definately shrink tube the connections). I want these new birds to be a little easier to repair.

Here's the way I'm planning to pin the FC. I've color coded them. Red (power), green (ground), yellow (video signals), blue (other signals) and white (TX/RX).

View attachment 415

Jerry

Where did you get those colored pins?
What are Bullet connectors?
how do you solder those pins in?

 

[theGreenOrange]

Solder them in from the bottom. Just put the tip of the iron on the pin, touch a tiny bit of solder to the pin and wait for the pad to wick it down before removing the iron.

 

[theGreenOrange]

Bullet connectors are simple one wire connectors sometimes used on the motor wires.

Jerry, they aren't worth it IMO. Soldering 3 wires doesn't take long. But you have to solder on the bullet connector anyways to replace a motor. It causes more soldering using those things and would only be worth it If you have 2 sets of motors you want to swap between often. That's just me though.

 

[Jtrjr]

Green,

Yeah, I decided against the bullets, not enough room anyway. Frank is up and operational. Just bench tested so far but spooled up the motors, calibrated the ESC's, installed the camera, tacked everything down, made a few changes in Betaflight, got my OSD going, set up most of my radio stuff and some other minor stuff. Still have to figure out a camera mount for a Sessions. Short of that should be ready for a outdoor test when the weather cooperates.

Jerry