Hi,
Currently my setup is working, however its not a neat setup and hence I hope someone here can help me. I use pixracer due to its size(Might be other newer boards out there that is better to this). I have connected two BLheli esc, however I run these through two small XT60 current sensors. So the signal cable goes to pixracer channel 1 and channel 2. The current sensing ADC voltage goes to A0 and A1 on an arduino nano connected to pixracer through i2c.
Q1: Can i somehow read out current and voltage from the BLHeli ESC to get rid of the XT60 current sensor?
The BL heli esc is basically running two brushless motors which works as two large servos, one is connected to a worm gear to get self locking properties, while the second one is a normal planetary gearbox.
Q2: Can the second motor be configured to have RegEn properties?
As a feedback for the position of the brushless motors I use two multi turn potentiometers, which are connected to A2 and A3 on the arduino nano.
Q3: Can i hook these up to pin lets say 4 and 6 on the pixracer and configure the PX4 to use these as analogue input instead of output?
I use a power module to step down 4s battery to power the pixracer and arduino nano as well as measure the current that the electronics draw and to get the battery voltage. Finally I have my own built force sensor sensor(hx711) connect to another arduino nano and transmit over i2c almost 1m away to the pixracer. I also have Airspeed sensor and GPS, this means i have 4 devices connected to an i2c splitter.
Q4: Can i somehow get rid of the i2c splitter? Like rewrite my force sensor to use rs232 instead and somehow connect airspeed and gps directly to pixracer?
For telemetry I currently use and external telemetry module, however I do use frsky receiver. Q5: is it possible to get rid of the big bulky telemetry and use the micro size frsky inverted PPM sum receiver for both input and telemetry?
Final question, So I have a XT60 splitter cable that takes the battery and supply the power module and the two BLheli ESC, on the input + cable I have soldered on another XT60 connector in series, that works as my on off switch. Q6, can i make this wiring harness smaller, like a better way to power it on/off and use one of the cell through the balancing plug to power the pixracer?
Basically what I would like to do is to make my fully working setup cleaner, by getting rid of the arduino nano, the telemetry module, wiring harness, 2 current sensors, power module , i2c splitter. Is this possible and how to implement it?