Electrical – How to use LiPo to power 3 servos, brushless motor, and an Arduino board

lipopower supply

QUESTIONS

  • Can the LiPo battery at the top of the list be used to power all the
    devices below?
  • How should I connect the LiPo to each device (what types of
    connectors, resistors, etc, are required)?

DEVICE LIST
The devices that need to be powered are listed below with their specs.

  1. LiPo Battery

  2. Servo Motor (Powering 2 of these)

    • Operating voltage: 6.0 V ~ 7.4 V

    • Operating current: 320 mA ~ 420 mA

  3. Brushless Motor (already have an ESC for this, details in google doc, link below)

    • Max current: 15 A

    • Max power: 176W @ 11.1V (3S) / 235W @ 15V (4S)

    • ESC: 20 A ~ 30 A

  4. Micro Servo Motor

    • Voltage: 4.8 V ~ 6 V
  5. Arduino Uno Board

    • Operating voltage: 7 V ~ 12 V

More detailed specs for all devices can be found in this google doc:

Best Answer

As Packt posted, the maximum discharge of the battery in amps is the amp-hour rating of the battery times the C rating, which for your battery comes out to 55 amps. This should be more than enough to power all the devices, as everything but the brushless motor requires relatively little current.

To connect the lipo to the brushless motor, I recommend using thicker wire and heavier connectors, such as the xt60 that is already on your battery, as the motor draws a lot of current. The connectors and wires really don't matter for the others as long as you don't use too thin wire. Be sure all your devices/buck converters are connected in parallel from the battery.

The buck converter you linked to in a comment on packt's answer has a maximum continuous current of 2A, enough to power all three of your servos. You could get away with powering all the servos with one buck converter set at 6v, but you won't get the maximum power out of your larger servos. Anothe option could use 2 different buck converters as you suggested in your comment, one at 6v, and one at 7.4v.

Your arduino can be powered up to 12v, which is greater than the 11.1v rating of the battery, but keep in mind that fully charged 3s lipos actually charge to 12.6v, above the voltage the arduino can take. You could power the arduino with a third buck converter, or for the purposes of cost, simplicity, and weight, you could get an arduino that can take higher input voltages, such as the sparkfun redboard https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12757. You may need to put a capacitor on the input though for the arduino because of noise from the motor.

EDIT: Actually, you could just use an arduino as the voltage input limit goes up to 20v. Going .6v above the recommended voltage shouldn't cause much of an issue. You can see the arduino input voltage limitations here:https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardUno