Power management

Thinking about how we’ll feed all that monster I came with a plan. We have 2 main motors + 4 side ones and all of them are 4S (14.8V) – matching our battery pack. To get the best out of it we’ll setup everything in a parallel connection, getting 40000mAh on 14.8V ~> 592Wh.

Hear AC/DC's New 'Shot in the Dark' Single
Recommended band for listening when working on our blimp.

Based on our previous tests, we’ll be draining 8.31A with each main motor, when running on max thrust with those. Bit of high-school maths gives us power consumption in Watts – 2*8.31A*14.8W -> 245W. So finally we get some first flight guess – 592 / 245 -> 2.29 ~> 2 hours and 15 minutes. Rounding down we are ending on safe-ish 2hrs operation time.

Not too good (my original plan was 4hrs), but not too bad as well. Next stage is to distribute that power to all engines. I’ve designed a simple bridge, putting those XT90s in a middle (battery power connector), surrounded by XT60 (motors). Main motors will go next to those XT90s and those copter-ones will go further away. Probably not the best design, but will have to do for now.

Now couple hours drawing in OpenSCAD came with following model. This is already a second version as the first one was precise too much and got destroyed when testing if it fits properly.

I still took several pictures as it actually looked super-cool.

While waiting for a cover design and new print, Sebi soldered all connectors to a wire so those can be soldered further to the main plate. Well done Sebi!

Finally put that all together and I think it looks super good! What do you think?

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