In this lesson, we'll take a look at power distribution boards. After completing this lesson, you'll be able to identify areas of a power distribution board, and understand some PDB options. Power distribution boards are an important part of any quadcopter design. We have three here that we're going to talk about but there several on the market available depending on the functionality you need. The first one we have here is a Maytech, and this one is a power distribution board with an integrated XT60 connector that can plug directly into one of our batteries. Now this one at the very basic level, allows you to send power out to each ESC that allows you to bring in 12 volts, and condition it down to five volts so we can power things such as our camera. Most power distribution boards will have the BEC, or battery elimination circuit, to the point where you can condition the voltage down to a certain amount, five volts and 12 volts. Most of our components are going to be running directly off of the power from here, but we do need to condition it down to five volts so we can power our camera. The next power distribution board we have here is the Spedix. There's also another one on the market that's very similar to this made by Turnigy. Now this one is nice because it allows six ESC outputs, and it has bullet connectors on it. So, this means that it's completely plug and play. You also notice that it also has some harder pins for our five volt and our battery voltage. So, we can take this power directly out to power our flight controller as well as our camera, and we can take out the 12 volt signal to power our transmitter for our video signal back down to our ground station. Units like this notice have two different sets of bolt holes. The smaller set of bolt holes matches the Maytech as well as the one we're currently using in our design. These are nice because this bolt pattern lines up with a lot of flight controllers that are on the market such as the full size CC3D. If you don't have any experience with soldering, an option like this is great because you can plug your ESC's power directly into these as well as the connectors going directly to power your flight controller and your camera. The unit that we're using is made by FPD Racing. Now this is designed specifically for the CC3D and has one additional functionality that we like to use. And that's something called an OSD or an on-screen display. This specific board allows us to take power out to six ESCs, so we can control up to six motors, and also has conditioned power for things like five volt or 12 volt. But in addition to that, we have the ability to take power out to a camera, take the video signal into the board, and then take the video signal out of the board to our video transmitter. The reason this is important is because this board has a small package size, it uses that same 36 by 36 the Maytech did, but it also allows us to keep the package size small and use that on-screen display functionality that the other two didn't have. There are plenty of power distribution boards on the market. Several are actually integrated into chassis, more have additional functionality than this one. So, keep that in mind when you're planning your build to look around at your options, so that way you can pick the best port for you.
