Sony: Disassembling “Airpeak S1” (Part 2): Electric Speed Controller
Discover a new sensor from a drone
-The main board is “3 stories”-
“Airpeak S1”
The first multicopter drone “Airpeak S1” developed by the Sony Group
Here, we will introduce the second part of the disassembly that was carried out with the cooperation of the company.
Disassembly of Airpeak S1
“Vision Sensing Processor”
Equipped with “Snapdragon 845” etc.
I went to the point of removing the main board.
“Flight controller / power supply board”
The next thing that appeared was the “flight controller / power supply board” (Fig. 1).
As shown in Figure 2, the flight controller is the cornerstone of the drone that controls flight.
Infrared ranging,
Geomagnetism, barometric pressure, IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit), GNSS (Global Positioning Satellite System), etc.
Analyzing the information of various sensors,
It controls motors, propellers, ESCs (Electric Speed Controllers), etc.
The flight controller chip was mounted on the back of this board (Fig. 3).
On the back side
It also had a power management IC and an SD card slot for flight log recording.
Power management IC
Manages power supply to the main board, flight controller, and various sensors.
SD card
Save various command values and sensor values as flight logs.
FPV (First Person View)
The camera image is compressed by encoding and sent wirelessly to a dedicated transmitter (propo).
Airpeak S1 board is “3 stories”
Two boards were placed under the flight controller / power supply board.
In other words, the Airpeak S1 board has a “three-story” structure.
The two boards on the first floor are
A small board equipped with a power distribution board for supplying power to four motors and a 6-axis IMU (Fig. 4)
High torque self-developed motor
The motor part that realizes the high kinetic performance of Airpeak S1 has been disassembled.
First, remove the exterior part “antenna cover” on the opposite side of the propeller.
In fact, important parts were hidden in this.
There are two dedicated transmitters, two antenna boards for wireless communication, and one board with a geomagnetic sensor (Fig. 5).
Both have a vertically long shape.
Airpeak S1 antenna
Dedicated transmitter and Wi-Fi
The Airpeak S1 communicates with a dedicated transmitter via Advanced Wi-Fi for 2.4GHz drones.
Video can be transmitted up to a distance of 2 km.
Geomagnetic sensor
It was installed in the antenna cover away from the body to avoid the influence of the magnetic field generated by a large current.
Disassemble the motor body
Next, the main body of the motor part is disassembled.
When you remove the chassis,
A brushless motor for rotating the propeller and an ESC mounting board have come out (Fig. 6).
Brushless motor
Ingenuity such as how to wind the coil,
From low revs to high revs
A wide range of characteristics has been achieved with a dynamic range.
The ESC algorithm is also developed independently.
The propeller and ESC are integrated into a trinity to achieve high kinetic performance.
Nikkei Cross Tech (xTECH)