Controller Heating

[Myles Levine]

Hi,
I am using a drone with a qualcom qsms8250 500 chip that gets extremely hot, especially over prolonged use. What are the normal operating temperatures of this chip (and others onboard), so I can compare to ensure my chip is not overheating?

What are you relying on for normal cooling? Propeller motion? Will hovering for prolonged times provide enough cooling, or does the drone need to be moving laterally?

What recommendations do you have for keeping the electronics cool during bench testing?

Thank you!

[Alex Kushleyev]

@Myles-Levine , the VOXL2 SoC is not designed to run at full power for a long time without cooling.

The maximum operating temperature is around 95 deg C, at which point, the CPU will being automatically throttling (reducing) operating frequency.

It is common to rely on air flow from propellers when the drone is flying, however some implementations may have a small fan as well.

Since you mentioned bench testing, installing a small fan next to VOXL2 to get airflow over the board should help. No specific recommendations, you can start with a standard 12V fan used in PC power supplies.

It can be relatively easy to overheat VOXL2 without cooling, because it has quite a powerful processor and the heat is concentrated in such a small package. You can spend more time optimizing the code (if possible) or add passive and / or active cooling.

Alex