I'm trying to build my own quadcopter and I plan to design my own flight controller / mother board. Now my question is, how do drones, such as the DJI phantom, reduce a high voltage with high current, like 11.1V 5000mah, to a more usable voltage, such as 3V, for the controller, yet still distribute the a maximum number of power.
- Is the power pin of the ESC connected directly to the main supply?
- Do they use a step-down converter to lower the main voltage to a more usable voltage for the microcontroller?
- How do I calculate how big does my traces on the PCB needs to be?