A Flight control board I purchased approx 2 months ago is completely dead. I was just flying and I had 3 successful flights. On the fourth flight the copter powered up the motors but wouldn't do anything else. No response. When I went over to it I smelled something burning. Upon further inspection I found the flight controller to be completely dead with no lights. I checked everything else using a back up flight control board and everything seems to work fine including the GPS and nav boards. The lipo batteries also checked out good as they charge and discharge normally. For some reason the board is just completely dead and smells burnt like something shorted out. All soldering and wiring looks prestine. Going back to Quadrocopter today.
I'm lucky it happened when it did because the flight before that was right over allegheny river as I was filming the Steelers stadium. I looked over the GPX files for the first 3 flights and everything seemed really good, no issues.
No, see picture below. I do have flight control board a little closer to the battery tray as I added slightly higher standoff's so that the motor pigtail wires wouldn't be so squeezed against the PDB.
I'm not saying that something foreign landing on the flt board caused the issue but I will say that I've been flying MK since 2007 and have seen it all including a couple of instances where foreign matter killed uncovered electronics or caused a crash. There are so many operators flying very expensive gear and I just cannot understand how they feel secure operating with exposed electronics. To me that's like uncasing your car's computer and mounting it on the roof of your car and driving down the highway.
Howard, what are you using to cover your electronics? Main reason I don't is the heat we have in Phoenix. I need all the airflow over them as I can get! Josh
Josh, your control board isn't producing much heat at all so no worries there. Your ESCs can be covered with heat shrink tubing while cuting out openings for the heat sinks. My control board is enclosed in a plastic electronics case with a screw on lid... I don't fly the CS frame.
I would think it would be hard to cover the electronics with the battery tray on top. I also think that for anyone with any decent size payload or in warmer climates would have BL overheating issues.
The reason why I never liked the distro board idea. I like my ESCs free and under the flow of clean and cool prop air flow. I don't care about the clean look of not having power wires running down the length on the arms. Beside, if an ESC fails It's easier to just swap it out when not soldered to a distro board.