Pathfinder Edge: Electrical installation
Pathfinder Edge: Electrical installation
The pathfinder edge box needs Power, Mavlink data, and a GPS antenna. This section will go into detail on those items. In addition the system also needs a UVC camera feed and an imu in the camera's motion frame. See the next section for details on those items.
Power
The pathfinder edge box will run on a power supply of 13 to 19 volts drawing a max of 5 amps with a load around 45-60 watts. The power connector is the barrel jack, left most on the front side of the box
The barrel plug is a 5.5mm x 2.5mm plug with positive on the inside and negative on the outside. See link below for an example
To power the box it is recommended to use a buck converter to drop and regulate a drones battery voltage down to 18v. In theory you could use any other converter as long as it could supply at least 45w of total power at a voltage between 13 and 19 volts. See below for a buck converter for use on 6s to 14s drones
In our experience it is possible to have capacitors on low quality buck/boost converters catastrophically fail due to high frequency noise from the drone.
GPS
While this product does provide the drone with means for GPS independence. GPS is currently needed for certain nice to haves such as automatically determining starting location.
The SMA connector on the left side of the box should be connected to a GNSS antenna with multi constellation support and supports L1, L2, and L5 bands. below are recommendations for antennas
https://www.amazon.com/Precision-Positioning-Four-Star-Multi-Frequency-Slinkdsco/dp/B0FPKPBW7G
https://www.amazon.com/MASWELL-Antenna-Adhesive-GLONASS-3meters/dp/B0BP7DQ8VL (contains a magnet that may interfere with drone compasses)
The location offset of the antenna relative to the pathfinder edge box or flight controller does not matter. Though the antenna should have a clear view to the sky free of conductive interference. Ie (steel, iron, aluminum, carbon filled 3D printer fillaments, etc)
There is a USB cable that comes from the inside of the box for the internal GPS unit. For gps to work it must be plugged into any USB A port.
Mavlink
For the pathfinder edge box to function data must be sent from and to the flight controller. This is accomplished by plugging the USB port on the flight controller into any USB A port on the box.
future work may include plugging into any serial port on the flight controller set to Mavlink