I am building a quadcopter that will use the sunrise cicada 30A 4 in 1 ESC, and an F4 Flame FC. The ESC has 2 (what I believe) are 16 gauge wires for +V and GND, as well as five thinner wires, four of which are signal wires for the motors and connect to the FC, and the last one another GND wire. The FC has a signal pad for each motor as well as a +V and -V pad for each motor. Since I am using a 4 in 1 ESC (which only has one set of +V and GND wires + another random smaller GND wire) I do not know how I am supposed to connect the ESC to the FC. I know that I am supposed to solder the signal wires from the ESC to the signal pads on the FC, but don't I need other connections as well?
The 16 gauge wires coming from the ESC (the fat red and black ones) look as if I am supposed to solder them to a XT60 plug and then plug that into the battery, but I thought I was supposed to connect the battery to the FC and not to the ESC? Or are the 16 gauge wires meant to solder onto the FC (the big + and - pads), and then I plug the FC into the battery?
What is the fifth small wire (next to the signal wires) that is labeled GND for? Why doesn't it have a +V wire paired with it? Why only ground?
A picture speaks a thousand words. ;D
You're a bit caught between 2 stools here. Your flight controller is an all in one power distribution board and flight controller. So normally you connect the power leads from each esc to the corners of it and it distributes the battery power to them. What's good about that on this board is that it has a current sensor and osd, so it will display the current and consumed mAh on the screen.
With a 4 in one esc, you normally connect the battery straight to it. The extra leads will be ground and battery voltage to connect to the flight controller so it knows the voltage of the battery.
The problem here is that if you connect the battery to the esc's directly, you won't get any current reading as it will bypass the current sensor.
I think the best way is to connect the battery lead to the flame and de solder the esc one. Then you can use a 16awg wire to connect the ground from the F.C. to the esc ground. The tricky bit is getting vbat to the esc after the current sensor (it's that thing underneath the positive battery pad on the F.C.). You could just use one esc positive but then you'll be putting a lot of current through one pad. You could also take a lead from each of the 4 esc connections on the corner of the flame and join them all into the esc battery pad. Not pretty but it'll work with current sensing and you won't have an excess going through one pad.
hTH
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