Naze32 Power Input

If I'm reading the documentation correctly my acro Naze32 can be powered directly from my PDB/harness off a 3S battery. It has an onboard 5v regulator.

Is this correct? Can I also power my receiver from the Naze32?

I see some builds where it appears the FC is powered from one of the ESCs. Is there a "right" way to power the FC and Rx?
 

Craftydan

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I know the afromini controllers (a smaller(!) version of this board) has onboard regulation with a tap for powering external electronics like your RX, but from all I've read about the Naze32 boards, up to rev5, the high power bus is still shared among the interfacing connections, without a regulated tap. that means the harness going to the RX and to the ESCs are tied together and there is no 5v regulation -- just 3.3v regulation.

There's a better-than-even chance the regulator for the 3.3v bus is more than able to handle 12v (they're usually good up to 18) directly, but I doubt your receiver would be so tolerant. If your receiver can run 3.3v under 100ma (pretty common for satellites) you should be good to go.

Otherwise, if your ESCs have UBECs built in, why waste the extra weight on an external UBEC? running power off the ESCs is the simpler way to go.

BTW, there *IS* a battery sense port capable up to 6S, but it's a resistor limited A/D port -- it reads voltage, but can't be used for powering the device.

Edit:

On second glance . . . scratch the second regulator on the Afromini -- it also has a shared unregulated high voltage bus. Also, the note on the Afromini leads me to say, use high voltage with caution -- the earlier versions had a 3.3v regulator limited to 5.5v, and the newer versions are limited to 16v (not 18v).

Unfortunately that still leaves the regulator on the regular Naze board undefined, so proceed with caution.
 
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Thank you craftydan!

My Afro 20A ESC has a .5a linear BEC (per HK site here).

I should only allow one ESC to power the FC though correct (remove the other 3 hot wires and shrink wrap them before connecting to the FC)?

And with only one ESC powering the FC, would it be reasonably safe to power my Rx directly from the Naze at that point?

For reference, my FC is a AfroFlight Naze32 rev5.

Edit: My receiver is an OrangeRX R800X. I wasn't sure if I could use a satellite receive by itself (even for binding) so I ordered the normal receiver.
 
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Craftydan

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You'll probably be fine running both the RX and Naze directly off the 1/2A UBEC. If you went with a tri or added a pan/tilt gimbal I'd recommend reworking your power to make sure the servos got power from the other UBECs, but that's more a capacity issue -- servos can get hungry.

In reality there's a *chance* the UBECs might flight about what "5v" really is, but on the whole, most UBECS are pretty good at hitting 5v -- especially if they're all from the same batch -- and there's enough resistance in the servo wires themselves to balance most everything out. I wouldn't stress out about it, but if you're nervous, pulling the power lead on all but one won't hurt anything.