Has anyone measured the power consumption of the Pixhawk 2.1 along with the normal associated peripherals like MavLink radio and GPS/compass module?
I imagine it’s higher than the Pixhawk v2 with the heated IMU’s. I’m setting up a gas helicopter with a Pixhawk 2.1 for two-hour flight time, with the PH2.1 powered by a NiMH battery pack with no BEC. I want to make sure the battery pack has double the capacity required to power the flight electronics (servo power is a separate 2S LiPo) for two hours of continuous flight.
Maximum draw must be something like 3A at 5V. It’s broken down like this (from their documentation):
The FMU and IO board certainly won’t draw more than 0.5A by themselves (USB port is limited to 0.5A). So, theoretically the worst case scenario is something like 1.5A + 1A + 0.25A + 0.5A. Normally you’ll probably only be using half that or less.
The caveat is that this does not include servos, which can have pretty large momentary draws. Not a factor in your case, but that is why the Pix 2.1 allows the servo rail to be powered separately.
Thanks. That’s what I would think too. Because 3A for 2 hours would require a 6,000mAh NiMH pack, and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t take that much.
The servo battery I can keep charged with the generator on the engine. I was going to power the flight electronics with a BEC off that same battery. But I don’t like the “dirty” power that most switch mode BEC’s put out. So decided to use a NiMH pack instead.
