X12 Quad ESC

IMAGE OF PCB, potentially including its place on the relevant ROV

	PCB Summary
Vehicle	X12, ROV Triton
Contributors	Jacob Bobson, Grant Geyer
Predecessors	X11 Quad ESC
Success?	Yes, with flaws

SID Link
REPO Link

What purpose does this board serve?

Power and control ESCs to drive thrusters and motors and connect their outputs to binders.

To what boards (or enclosures etc) does it connect?

Backplane and the binders panel jacks in the power box for thrusters / motors.

What priorities did you have in your design? What design considerations did you have? What methodologies did you follow? (routing a differential pair, keeping something separate for isolation, etc)

Get high current to the ESCs
Connect the ESCs to binders
House micro for controlling ESCs
Re program ESCs

What changes were made to your board from the previous year(s)?

5V and 3.3V no longer pass through from Conversion to backplane.
ESCs thruster binders connect directly to the Quad ESC boards, not with the backplane in between.

What factors affected your board outline?

The width of the Afro ESCs set the minimum width (width being the smaller XY dimension). The board needed to be long enough for the TE 3 pin 5mm connectors to clear the backplane beneath the Quad ESC boards.

What reference materials did you use for circuits? (Provide links to these)

None

What is the throughput of your board (power, data/speeds, etc)?

Why did you pick certain components for your board? (If you don’t know the answer/were told, now is a great time to ask)

What issues did you have with your board (in both design and assembly)

Boards were difficult to seat properly since they were blind.
ESC connectors were difficult to plug in and pushed up against the board making it harder for the boards to be plugged in.

How did you go about integrating with mechanical? What changes did you make?

Other notes: what else about your board should be mentioned?

What errors/mistakes were made?

Mux was unrouted, leading to the flywires being added between GND and 3.3V. The micro couldn't be programmed with it.

If you had to do it over again, what might you change?

Add headers for a 12->3.3V buck converter or linear regulator plug in so the board can be powered by 1 supply in testing outside of the stack.
No bulk caps for the ESCs (also issue on X11).