So my question is...Can I use the one ESC, with a battery plugged in. To power ALL 4 ESC and Arduino. Could I also wire up all the ESC's to one bec input?
Thank you to all who took time to answer this question.
I've worked with ESCs and BECs with my RC helicopters.
I'm not really understanding what you're trying to achieve here; a BEC is a Battery Elimination Circuit - you feed power into the ESC from (typically) a LiPO battery - the ESC chops and changes that static DC power into something the motor needs - and you feed that output to the motor. The BEC simply takes a fraction of the power from your LiPO batteries and regulates it down to something your electronics need so you don't need to have a separate battery to power servos and electronics.
So with that frame of reference:
"can you power an Arduino from a BEC?" Yep - sure - so long as it's set to feed in the right voltage.
"Can I use the one ESC, with a battery plugged in. To power ALL 4 ESC and Arduino. Could I also wire up all the ESC's to one bec input?" This is the bit that's confusing me; if you're talking about CONTROLLING 4 ESCs with an Arduino then that's simple - just connect their control inputs to any PWM pin and go from there - but you wouldn't normally take the output of the BEC from one of the battery-connected ESCs and use that as input power for the 3 ESCs (not 4 - it can't power itself from it's own output) (assuming that I'm understanding you correctly).
Fundamentally you'll probably want to connect all 4 ESCs to a battery power source(s) - connect all 4 control wires to an Arduino - and connect the BEC output from one of the ESCs to power the Arduino.
"Can I use the one ESC, with a battery plugged in. To power ALL 4 ESC and Arduino. Could I also wire up all the ESC's to one bec input?"
I see how that is confusing.
I am asking If ONE ESC with a LiPo battery can power the other 3 ESC's using the GPIO pins plugged into arduino. But I think I will wire up all 4 ESC's to one battery pack like you. recommended.
So I am making a drone, and I am using 4 ESC's to control the motors. I'm trying to achieve all 4 ESC powered with one battery instead of 4 different batteries to each BEC. I have no experience in this stuff and am still researching. I just don't want things to blow up
I think you're a little confused as to how ESCs work; the BEC is an OUTPUT FROM the ESC - it's not an input TO the ESC. You don't power an ESC by feeding it a voltage on the BEC wires ... the ESC always gets it's power from the battery attached to it's input and the BEC (if fitted) output can then be used for other things.
Think of a car battery attached to a starter motor via a switch and that switch also has a small wire going off to a cigarette lighter. You won't start 3 other vehicles by connecting their starter motors to the cigarette lighter ... which is kinda the equivalent of connecting ESC inputs to a BEC output
Soooo ... to get you back on track what you'll need to do is connect the inputs of all 4 ESCs to ONE battery; technically they could be connected to different batteries but that wouldn't make a lot of sense for a number of reasons.
Generally speaking you're probably better off getting a separate BEC that you can connect directly to the battery; the Arduino won't need much power and a buck converter will probably be just fine.
You're going to have a LOT of challenges to solve though (inc radio control); I've got a LOT of experience with RC helicopters ... starting to get a small to moderate amount of experience with Arduino - and there's no way in the world that I'd even know where to start when it came to designing my own drone (which I take to mean quadcopter).
I'd strongly agree - I've seen enough ESCs quite literally explode in flames
without warning to never trust the BEC output of an ESC. You don't want
that to fry the microcontroller too.
