hey everyone im in need of some help with my t500 thruster
i have the following:
Cube orange
ESC basic speed controller for the t500
and a t500 thruster
12.8volt 100AH LIFEPO4 battery
how do i connect everything? theres no simple instruction manual like connect a to b and i constantly get conflicitng information. its been over a year ive been trying to do this
Hi @Tony123,
I’d recommend following our thruster usage guide for the basic thruster connections. The ESC’s signal cable can be connected to the servo rail of your Cube Orange (white wire to a signal pin, black wire to the ground rail, e.g. on one of the MAIN outputs - if it’s just the single thruster for propulsion then MAIN OUT 1 is likely what you want).
How you’re intending to control it will determine any relevant software setup / firmware parameters (and potentially which pin(s) and are best to use), but you haven’t specified what you want to do with it (or what you’ve tried so far, and how it hasn’t worked the way you expected it to) so that’s hard to provide meaningful advice for.
There are various guides and documentation pages available for different use-cases, but without knowing what you’re trying to do we can’t direct you anywhere meaningful. That said, if you’re making a custom vehicle then there may be some components there aren’t existing resources for, and while this forum (and the more general ArduPilot one) are available for discussion there may be some things you have to try with your components, to confirm they do what you expect.
It’s perhaps worth noting that to the autopilot firmware running on your Cube Orange flight controller board, it doesn’t really matter which kind of motor you’ve attached as long as you’ve assigned it as an output type that allows it to provide a valid control signal to your ESC. Our ESCs accept a servo-style PWM signal, which is also what our guides assume, and is quite possibly what your firmware is already set up to do, assuming you’ve followed a setup guide for the vehicle type you’re trying to create.
shouldnt i be concerned that all electricity the thruster is using is routed through this little orange cube? shouldnt it be wired to my big battery? and only a signal cable is connected to the cube orange. also the wires dont have any kind of connector to neatly plug into my cube orange. do i solder something together?
thanks
wait so when it plugs into the cube, is the white on top or bottom its reversable. this red and white connect goes to the battery? are there special connectors for it or should i just strip the wires? i wish i could send pictures
thanks
Hi @Tony123 -
The connection to your autopilot is only for the control signal. The white wire is this servo-style PWM signal, and the black is a ground reference so the microcontroller can “hear” it. The power flow is from the battery to the ESC via the red/black wires, and then to the motor via the three phase wires used in all brushless motors.
Is this what your autopilot looks like? If so, the header pins are along the front left edge, with ground the top row and signal the bottom row.
The orange cube does have a breakout that uses JST-GH connectors, not the dupont style header pins that Blue Robotics ESCs come with. To connect, you’ll need to splice the correct connector in - this kit is helpful in doing that.
are there wires that plug into this as well to feed into the battery, or should i just strip the end and buy wires from home depot and tie them together
oh this is a good point, i have a single servo for my little setup to learn how all this works:
i bought this its not in the mail yet but is it the right purchase
and this is the servo, just a simple pretty typical one
i feels really small though, i need it for a rudder. im making a little boat
is it easier to program and make a boat with two thrusters for the sake of turning and feasibility, rather than my approach of a single big thruster and a rudder?
Hi @Tony123 -
ArduRover supports both differential thrust as well as rudder + thruster, so no worries there! That servo doesn’t look waterproof, hopefully you can keep it dry!
You will need a 5V power supply for your autopilot and option Raspberry Pi running BlueOS… that unit looks pretty expensive for what it is! I prefer the Blue Robotics model.
The plug on the ESC for power is XT90 - you may want to purchase a mating plug to connect this to your battery - if using wire and splicing, you’ll want to solder and heatshrink the connection so it can carry significant power reliably.
As for the jst-gh adapters - looks like you won’t need them, as you found the correct place to connect ESCs. Make sure to check the documentation to plug the thruster into the correct output channel ArduRover expects!
Aaah oh wowee ok
So the 5v bec is what I need there ok
And that matek one I bought online fits the bill?
I imagine they’re really common bits of tech to purchase, I’m surprised the person I was paying to help to didn’t mention them before
Hi @Tony123 -
The 5V supply you have selected looks like it will work, yes. DCDC power supplies are indeed a very common solution!
