Diatone PDB - How to wire. **UPDATED**

[Nic]

**** Do at your own risk, I will not take responsibility for any damage caused****

Here are my instructions to wire up the Diatone PDB from BangGood.

It does not fit the ZMR250 frame BangGood offer apprarently, so you';ll have to measure up.

http://m.banggood.com/Diatone-ZMR250-PCB-Board-For-ZMR250-Quadcopter-Frame-Kit-p-976127.html?p=2M3022098648201211GT

Costs £3.81* ( As of 24/06/2015 )

What you';ll need:

Soldering Iron + solder
Wire cutters
Drill with 3mm bit*

( If you want your FC on the board and to have the PDB as the centre board. Follow first. ) 1: Strip down your ZMR, check if the Flight Controller fits the holes. *If not, you will have to drill 3, 3mm holes to make it fit ( I had to used a big hammer drill but did the job ). MAKE SURE YOU CHECK WHERE YOU ARE PUTTING IT! DO NOT DRILL THE TRACE LINES.

2: Turn over the PDB and solder on the supplied LEDs. You get 3 white and 1 red. You';ll have to check which is which. + to +, - to -.

3: Solder on your + and - leads to the pads at the end, front or back. ( back is with DTI on ) for your battery with connector on. Test the board works by plugging in your battery. The LEDs will light up.

4: Attach the Flight Control Board.

Now time to prepare the ESC';s.

5: Make a note of which motors go where. ( I numbered mine and drew a picture so I know the correct way )
Your ESCS should have 5 wires coming off 1 end, 1 red +, 1 black -, and a 3 strip. ( Signal, red + and brown/black - ) You only need the main + and - along with the signal wire. ( Usually yellow/white ) So pull the signal wire from the strip and snip the other 2 down. Do this for all 4.

6: Line up your frame arms with your ESC and motors on in the correct order. ( Remember the FC should have an arrow on it pointing to the front ) Attach the arms to the PDB and snip down the ESC wires to length and solder them to the correct points. Red to +, Black to -, signal wire to the O. Repeat for the other 3.

7: This is the main part and fiddly bit! Connecting them all upto the FC! As you can see on your PDB, there are 6 holes next to your FC area. 1 +, 1 -, and 4 o';s. Those 4 o';s are for the signal wires. ( They go in this order, Negative, Postive, ESC 4,3,2,1. So, left to right if you have the holes near you. )

8: Strip down your spare servos ( The black connectors ) And put 3 of the signal wires you snipped off into it. ( They should still have the pins on them. ) Now, with another servo, make 1 with Black -, Red + and Signal o.

9: The FC I used was a MultiWii 2.5. So, My connections were not near the soldering points. So, check the length of wire you need and snip down.

10: You need to solder the new servos you';ve made to the soldering points. The first one, with Red +, Black -, signal o, goes into Red +, Black - and 1 ( The last hole ). Then the ESC Servo 4,3,2 goes into the next 3 holes.

11: Once they are soldered, you need to connect to the FC.  You need the Red +, Black -, signal o, servo on ESC 1, then the next servo only needs to connect to the signal pins on the FC.

12: If you have a FPV camera, now you can solder it to the  pads. ( But remember to always have your ariel attached or it';ll fry. ( Or something )

13: Connect up your TX and battery, test all motors are working and spinning the right way. If all is well, assemble your quad back together!

If your motors are spinning incorrectly,  then swap pins over on the FC till it';s right.

If you';re ESCs are not calibrated at this point, you need to disconnect all servos from your RX and connect your main servo from your FC ( The Red, black and signal ) into the channel for your throttle. ( Was channel 3 for me ) and proceed with your calibration, to calibrate the rest, just swap the signal wires over from the 3 signal servo into the main servo. ( I numbered them all with a little bit of sticky label. )

I';ll attach a picture later of mine.

Hopefully that covers everything! If you think i';ve missed something, let me know and i';ll add it.

[quadfather]

1: Strip down your ZMR, check if the Flight Controller fits the holes. *If not, you will have to drill 3, 3mm holes to make it fit ( I had to used a big hammer drill but did the job ). MAKE SURE YOU CHECK WHERE YOU ARE PUTTING IT! DO NOT DRILL THE TRACE LINES.
....
**** Do at your own risk, I will not take responsibility for any damage caused****

Your disclaimer should be at the top of the post, or at least in step 1 as well.

You have drilled through the ground planes of the PDB on the both sides.  A substantial part of the PDB';s underside is also a positive layer.  If you drill a hole through both and use a conductive bolt you';re asking for trouble.

And just because you don';t see traces doesn';t mean there aren';t any.  PCBs can have multiple layers between the top and bottom (think power lines behind a wall).  I';d strongly advise drilling holes into them unless you know for sure that you won';t touch and planes or traces.

[Nic]

What he said.

[bazzerh]

if you use the diatone pdb as i think its intended, ie on the bottom below the zmr bottom plate then you wouldnt be drilling anything anyway. or do it your way but use a modern flight controller.

I';m just going to build a zmr with this pdb but im only going to use it for powering the escs and attaching the battery lead. I';ll run the esc signal wires direct and intact to the flight controller pins and also use a 5v bec to power it. Also as i';m going 3S on this one then the 12v vreg is useless so i';ll remove it. I';ll also be running fpv gear from the board but then i';ll be filtering it and running the wires up near the top deck to avoid signal noise. I dont usually bother with LEDS but i guess as they came in the bag then i';ll solder some on the bottom.

[Nic]

**UPDATED**

Should be all correct now, as i';ve done with mine and it works perfectly.