Control 8 motors with Navio+

Hi everyone !

Is there enough PWM output to control 8 motors on the NAVIO+ board ?
I saw there is 13 outputs but may I use them to connect 8 ESC ?

Thanks !

Hexa configuration is supported by APM which is supported by Navio. So yes of course the output is via an ESC to the commonly used brushless motors. You can use the spare outputs for fun stuff like gimbals, bomb bays, parachutes. Not sure how many total outputs APM supports but Navio has plenty and none of them have any special restrictions. Actually there are 16 on the chip used, but three are wired-up to the red, green and blue of the bright LED on top of the board.

As you have no RC receiver it will be simpler to wire-up. Normally if you had servos or anything else like the receiver which needed power, then you would need to wire-up one 5v power line from an ESC with a BEC. One point of caution, you must not wire up more than one 5v supply to the servo rail.

If you are sure you don’t need power for anything else, you could go for “opto” ESCs then. Later you could always add a seprarate 5v BEC.