Build a Servo Power Supply

An Advanced Hardware Hack

If you plan to attach a servo to your ELEV-8 v3 and use it in flight, it is a good idea to give it its own power supply.  With a few components and a little soldering, it is easy to build a power supply for your additional servos.

DO NOT PROCEED unless the propellers and battery have been removed from your ELEV-8 v3!

• Gather your materials.
• Carefully study this diagram:

• To begin building the power supply shown, cut a red and a black jumper wire in half.
• Take one half of a red wire and one half of a black wire and cut them in half again – be sure to save all of the pieces.
• Strip the cut ends of all of the wires so they can be soldered.
• Solder the wires to the components as shown in the diagram above.
• Use electrical tape or heat shrink tubing to wrap up exposed connections and keep them from touching each other and shorting out.
• Connect the power supply you just built to a 3-pin header on the ELEV-8 Power Distribution Board. You may need to remove the flight stack from the ELEV-8 v3 to reach the connections:

• Connect a white (signal) jumper wire to the top pin on the header your servo was originally plugged into on the ELEV-8 Flight Controller:

• Connect the white (signal) wire and power supply to your servo as shown in the drawing above.
• Turn on your transmitter.
• Connect your ELEV-8 v3’s battery and veryify that everything is working correctly.

If you hear any popping or hissing, or smell something hot or smoke, immediately disconnect the battery!

DO NOT FLY Your ELEV-8 v3 after modifying the hardware or firmware until you have completed the safety testing on the last page of this tutorial!