I have an Arduino Uno board that I am powering it using a 11.1 V 4000 mAh LiPo battery. I am using it as the controller for a drone I have made. It has worked fine up to now, but the last time I tried to power it up, it simply didn't do anything. I tried powering it through the USB port, and it worked just fine. I made no changes to my setup between now and the last time it worked. I was powering it through the power jack, and I also tried powering it through the Vin pin, but the results were the same. I have a low voltage indicator which tells me that my battery is well charged, and I also tested the battery by connecting it to a breadboard, through a voltage regulator and powered a led with a 300 ohm resistor and it worked fine.
I actually flew my drone several times and it worked fine. I made no changes to the power supply I am using.
I took the board out of my quadcopter to examine it, but there is no visible damage or burn marks or anything.
Any ideas on what could have gone wrong? Is there any way (a software maybe?) to check if there is something wrong with my board?
Thanks in advance for the help!
It's certainly not software. I'll bed your bottom dollar yo blew the on board regulator. What else are you powering from the 5V of 3,3V of the Arduino? Aka, what's connected to it? The on board regulator on the Arduino can't power much, a few indicator LED's is max, certainly when power from a voltage like that. You can use a external regulator (connected to 5V) and use the Arduino just fine. Or replace the on board regulator.
Thank you for the reply. I am powering two things: a AR6100e 2.4 GHz RC reciever (through the 5V pin) and a small 10DOF sensor chip (through the 3.3V pin). Do you think any of these could be the problem? Also, I found that the radio receiver stopped working, but this happened before there was any problem with the Arduino. Do you think this could related in some way?
I have an external chip with a AMS1117 5V regulator. Should it be safe to use this to power my Arduino board through the 5V pin?
Thanks again for the help!
Especially a radio module can use quite a bit of power. You can try the module but be sure there is proper cooling on it. Maybe it would be better to get a small dc-dc converter because to waste a whole lot less power as heat.
And yeay, can be related, if the power to the Arduino isn't there the radio has no power as well.