power connection... [Archive]

J3DI

06-30-2005, 06:13 AM

Hello,

having heard about receiver switch failures, i wondered what you guys thought about switching your power on. I have received some deans connectors but they look very fiddly to pull apart. Does anyone have any suggestions for something secure and easy to connect/disconnect when at the field????

Regards,
Dan

marked23

06-30-2005, 01:19 PM

There are several ways to manage the risk of a switch failure:

A) Don't use a switch (just plug in each time)
B) Use a nice switch
C) Use a solid state switch
D) Use two switches

A is a pain because of the lack of convienience. If you use Deans Ultra connectors, it would not be a bad setup in terms of reliability. However the connectors are hard to mate in a single motion. As a result, you may occasionally give your gyro a bit of a false start.

B is still a single point of failure. But many nicer switches are DPST and both poles are used. What this means is that internally, the single switch is two switches. However the utility of this solution is limited because there is no way to know if one of the internal switches has failed. (Hmm... I feel a product idea.)

C is a higher-end solution. This switch is still a single point of failure, but the design is such that most (but not all) failure scenarios result in the switch failing closed (meaning the RX stays turned on). Duralite and Fromeco sell some popular switches that fall into this category. Some models of this type of switch feature a integrated voltage regulator for the folks who use lithium batteries.

D is the most robust solution. You have two separate wires from your battery(ies) going to two separate switches, that both feed into separate channels on your RX. You turn on both switches separately to ensure that both switches are in good condition. It's highly unlikely that both switches will fail at the same time. One cool idea with this option is that you can truly run two battery packs... adding battery redundancy too.