Power Question

[emoseman]

I've been steadily working through setting up my project and the setup I'm testing now consists of 1 electronic speed controller (ESC), 1 brushless motor with a propeller attached, and the esc is connected to the pwm ports H3 on the Axon.  To power the motor the esc is connected to a 0-10A 0-30V power supply that I have limited to 11.1V and approximately 3.5A.  The concern I have is that when the power supply is turned on it is powering the Axon board as well.  In fact if the power supply is turned on I can't turn the Axon off by cutting power to the battery power input connections.

Aside from the fact that this isn't the desired behavior I'm concerned that this isn't supposed to be happening and could potentially cause problems with the Axon.   I also need to be able to turn the Axon off on short notice (propeller blades spinning and all) and the power supply has the capacitance to keep the power flow going for a several seconds with the motor on full throttle.

Also, with just the power supply connected to the esc, and throttle at 0%, and the esc connected to port H3, the power supply registers that the Axon is only pulling 3.5V and around 0.1A when there is no other power being supplied to the Axon, i.e. there is nothing connected to the provided battery connection pins or any other pins, etc.

I hope I'm not slowing destroying my Axon!

Thanks for any help!
--
Evan

[Admin]

I'm a bit confused . . . can you rephrase exactly how you have the Axon wired up?

Does everything have a common ground (required)?

[emoseman]

Certainly, the configuration is as follows:

1 Axon, 1 Electronic Speed Controller, 1 Power supply, 1 Brushless Motor

The ESC is plugged into port H3 on the Axon, the power supply is connected to the ESC, and the motor is connected to the ESC as well.

That's it for this test setup.

[Admin]

The ESC is plugged into port H3 on the Axon

How many wires, and which wires, to where? Measure them each with a multimeter.

If you are applying a voltage to H3, you are possibly frying the Axon. With the Axon H3 not told to do anything, but with everything turned on, H3 should have 0V.

[emoseman]

The ESC is plugged into port H3 on the Axon

How many wires, and which wires, to where? Measure them each with a multimeter.

If you are applying a voltage to H3, you are possibly frying the Axon. With the Axon H3 not told to do anything, but with everything turned on, H3 should have 0V.

There are three wires from the esc to the Axon H3 port.

[Admin]

There are three wires from the esc to the Axon H3 port.

And the voltages on each are?

My theory is that the middle one is supplying power to the Axon (bad!). You should only have two wires: ground and signal.

[emoseman]

There are three wires from the esc to the Axon H3 port.

And the voltages on each are?

My theory is that the middle one is supplying power to the Axon (bad!). You should only have two wires: ground and signal.

The black wire has 0V, the middle red wire has ~5V, and the white wire barely registers at ~0.2V.  It looks just like a servo connector.

[Admin]

You can't connect that middle 5V red wire to the Axon.

[Razor Concepts]

Unhook the middle +5v wire and leave that unconnected.

[emoseman]

Wow am I glad I asked!  I've disconnected the red +5V middle wire on a esc to test and now everything is behaving as I would expect.

Thanks for the help!

--
Evan