From the documentation (PM07):
In addition to providing regulated power to Pixhawk 4 and the ESCs, it sends information to the autopilot about battery’s voltage and current supplied to the flight controller and the motors.
What is not super clear to me is whether the PM07 board allows per-motor current monitoring. Also, if this is not the case what are my hardware options to enable this.
The options that I have found are:
- TMotor alpha esc’s + data link. This exposes a uart from which you can read these values, but as far as I can tell this isn’t something that is supported by ardupilot yet.
- KDE esc’s which expose a CAN interface. Is getting the telemetry from these esc’s over CAN something that is supported by ardupilot or will I need to add a companion computer?
Thanks.
Any BLHeli32 ESC with current monitoring and telemetry will work, generally 4 in 1 controllers dont have per esc current monitoring. Easiest way to check is to look for a shunt resistor on the controller to measure the current.
Thans @geofrancis. So if I built a 8+1 VTOL and wanted to measure the current consumed by each motor how would I go about connecting it all up? Can I do a shared i2c or can bus between all the components? Also is there a particular brand/model of BL32 esc that you would recoment for use on a commercial VTOL?
You can use two FETtec 4-in-1 45A or 65A ESCs. They have per ESC current monitoring and are very easy to connect. Just GND, RX and TX
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You essentially just connect the telemetry wires from all the escs together and into one of the serial ports rx pins set to “esc telemetry”
The 4 in 1 escs that @amilcarlucas suggests will work as they have a shunt resistor for each esc rather than one shunt for all of them. You can connect them to another single esc to get all 9 monitored in theory but i have never seen it with more than 8 motors.
We support telemetry on up-to 12 motors. But I never tested a setup with all 12 motors.