Originally Posted by kneissl

what do most people use with electric helicopters?

We use a dedicated 1100mAh A123 battery pack in all of our 500 and larger size helis. Our turbine heli has dual 2300mAh A123 packs. Our 450 and smaller size use the built-in BEC with a Nano receiver, just in case.

whew, I'm running a 450.. thought my rig was running low on redundancy.

Originally Posted by JimDrew

This file plays back fine. I also added the ability a few versions ago to save the data in .xls format so that you could use Excel to view the data.

I am pretty sure I have version 1.7 but I will check tonight.

Update: Got a few of the parts I messed up in my original order, sweet design Alan! it seems to be working great!
There are some code tweaks I want to make which will hopefully be done this weekend and then i'll put together the 5 other boards I have and sell them off.. current estimate is $35,official number still TBD. (bring your own sensors.. the amp sensor shunt board is dependent on what power plugs you use, temp sensors have a few different forms depending on how you want to use it and i don't care to open a bigger can of worms than I have already) The two guys who posted are first in line. If Jim's update on the Aurora9 requires some code changes, i'll sell updated pic's for a couple bucks to those interested.

rig pictured -> (yeah, i used a couple ridiculous wattage resistors on my initial build)

also: does anyone have a pic 16 book they like? i haven't found a great resource for writing asm

I didn't see anything in Alan's code for handling the amperage. How is that handled?

What I might change in the code is the sensor ID to be one of our XPS reserved sets just for the A9.

I can't recommend any books. I just read the datasheets.

still getting my head around pic asm.. code wise it looks pretty much the same as the a/d conversion for voltage reading

OK. There is no information at all on the shunt being used, how it is wired, etc. The archive I saw just had the PCB artwork and that's it. No schematic or explanation on how to assemble the shunt, where it plugs in, etc. Is this info somewhere?

Alan talked a bit about it in the forums
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showp...6&postcount=87

Ah, thanks!

Got the first clean board put together, and did a tiny bit of coding. (the temp can now output in Fahrenheit with a simplified conversion, so it's out to lunch with extremes.. but should work fine for its purpose which is outputting in a number I can relate to) haven't put together a current sensor, so no legit testing on that. Voltage sensor seems to wander off a volt or two for every ten from what's tuned as a baseline, so it could use some tweaking, but definitely usable.
This is probably going to be a long term work in progress as I tweak things and lean more.. so to anyone interested in the current progress I have a small number of these available for $35 plus shipping. (this is literally cost of parts.. If I charged reasonable labor on these they'd be $100+ easy) If I actually sell a few of these and make some worthwhile progress code side I'll sell updated chips that will just plug in for $5
The board has input for two temperature sensors, a voltage sensor and a current sensor.

Disclamer:
I'm doing this because I wish some other hobbyist would have sold kits or something like this.. keep in mind there is no warranty. i'll do my best to help with anything. please don't come blame me because you burned up something or crashed because this board shorted out. This is exactly what it looks like; home brew hobby gear.

P.S. i'm getting out of the navy in a couple months and looking for employment, I'm a computer science major looking for a software engineering position and would appreciate any opportunities or contacts being passed my way.

My contact information can be found at my website:

www.videopenny.com

Well done. If I could make a suggestion. Jim has been threatening to make a board that interfaced with eLogger sensors, I believe they talk using I2C. Maybe you could reduce the board size by having a single input from an eLogger and let it do all the individual sensor handling. You could pick up the output on the eLoggers LCD interface and just downlink that info. Maybe have to have a specific PowerPanel setup for standardisation but that would be OK. Should make the coding a bit easier as well.

Originally Posted by kneissl

P.S. i'm getting out of the navy in a couple months and looking for employment, I'm a computer science major looking for a software engineering position and would appreciate any opportunities or contacts being passed my way.

My contact information can be found at my website:

www.videopenny.com

Look at www.arinc.com

Thanks for the job tip!!

I'll look into the elogger.. at first glance it seems very doable, still a ways down the road for my experience level.

Originally Posted by jh2rc97

Look at www.arinc.com

That's the company I work for

Originally Posted by zackjones

that's the company i work for :d

cha?