We read in the documentation that we need to use a BEC to power the servo rail. But when we attached the PPM the red LED on the X8R receiver is ON as shown in the picture below:
yeah, navio2 provides power to receiver port, but thats the only port on the rail that gets power from navio2![quote=“kenneth.f, post:1, topic:4349”]
When trying to bind the transmitter to the receiver we had no luck, does this mean that the receiver does not get enough power?
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together with your usb device a 500mah input (eg usb2) could be not enough - try with your BEC![quote=“kenneth.f, post:1, topic:4349”]
If we connect an SBEC to the power rail, do we risk damaging any components?
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you can power Navio2 (that would be: rpi’s usb ports, rpi, navio2 board and only receiver port on servo rail) from following sources
-usb
-navio power port
-servo rail
ALL simultaneously without damaging anything; (diode protection)
but your servo rail always needs to be powered separately - as it is not powered by Navio; (with the exception of the receiver port as you noticed!
→ so go ahead and connect your BEC to the servo rail (not to your receiver) - you don’t need USB and try to bind again!
totally missed that point [quote=“kenneth.f, post:3, topic:4349”]
Does the information you provided above count for Navio+ as well?
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you can connect 3 power sources (https://docs.emlid.com/navio/Navio-APM/hardware-setup-navio-plus/#powering-navio) (receiver is an exception) → you can check that by connecting your receiver to channel nr 1-13 (–>no power while usb (or navio power port) is powering navio+)
don’t connect any high load devices (e.g. servos) to your receiver while powered through usb;
Hi @panky[quote=“panky, post:4, topic:4349”]
you can check that by connecting your receiver to channel nr 1-13 (–>no power while usb (or navio power port) is powering navio+)
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We checked the other channels with a multimeter, and there is definitely power on the pins, as shown in the image below:
The reason we’re so careful is that we had an incident a couple of days ago… Where the UBEC emitted white smoke and the receiver and the Raspberry Pi 3 died.
In hindsight, the only thing we know we did wrong was connecting the UBEC to the AUX pin (something we did several times before without a problem).
We have replaced the Raspberry Pi 3 with another one, and checked in Mission Planner that it still works.
So we wonder if we destroyed something in the Navio+?
Are there other ways we can troubleshoot and check if it works?
i don’t know if there’s a diode on aux port! if there’s not: your BEC got heated by the other power source and then failed:
but if there’s a diode or not, following sounds logical to me:
you had overvoltage because of the failing BEC (diode became closed (punch-through)); and that would explain rpi and receiver failure! (rpi might work again - it has a self repairing fuse - so you might want to wait some time before you trash it)
you could add diodes manually if you need redundancy…and test output ports with a servo…
[quote=“kenneth.f, post:3, topic:4349”]
