Getting noise and annoying lines in your FPV video, even after adding extra capacitor and even LC filter? The issue could be coming from your 4in1 ESC and it might need some shielding.
4in1 ESC Noise Ruins Video
The MOSFET’s on your ESC switch thousands of times per second and creates EMI (electromagnetic interference) that can affect your FC – your gyro, MCU etc. If your camera and VTX are connected to the FC, your video might get noisy too.
This is not a problem with single ESC which is normally mounted on the arms, far away from the FC. It’s 4in1 ESC that can cause problems, especially when you have a power hungry build, running higher voltage like 6S, or in an extremely low profile stack.
“Hiding” FC from ESC Noise
When mounting your 4in1 ESC, put the MOSFET side facing away from the FC if possible.
It would also help if you can keep the distance between ESC and FC, the further the better. But sometimes we have to keep the stack compact in order to fit in low profile frames, in which case you might want to use some sort of shielding between the ESC and the flight controller.
Some ESC comes with shielding, as an example, the Holybro Tekko32 4in1. They added the copper tape in later batches, as the early batches were giving users too much noise without it.
Some 4in1 ESC comes with a heavy heatsink covering all of the FET’s which also acts like shielding, like the HGLRC Forward 65A we checked out recently.
If your 4in1 ESC has none of this shielding, you can buy some. It weights and costs close to nothing, and it would be useful as precaution too for your new builds.
At the time of writing, Diatone is the only one who makes this kind of shielding. Simply put it between the ESC and the FC (as close to the FC as possible) will shield the FC away from the noise coming from the ESC. Comes as 30x30mm and 20x20mm bundle for different stack sizes.
Banggood: http://bit.ly/2mqjwL3
GetFPV: http://bit.ly/2qTt0Rh
RDQ: http://bit.ly/2q2y1pX
Amazon: https://amzn.to/368WlHD
With Diatone’s shielding, make sure to solder a wire to the shielding’GND pad to a ground pad on your FC for maximum effectiveness.
7 comments
Hi Oscar!! Since I have noise from tbs nano pro rx I decided to put the shield on(even if my mamba esc already have the original shield). I tried capacitors, lc filters…never seems to help. Exept if I somehow reflect tbs waves with some Alu foil. If not flickering OSD and so on. So I tought this shield might help(from what I read above it is not for it but I will give it a try). Is it ok if the shield is touching the usb connector on FC(and some other components on bottom of FC, but not pads)?
I think it won’t work if you connect it to the ground of the source of EMI due to potential created between the two.
I bought 2 of these initially and tried on the Matek F722 Mini where it was very close to ESC below it. I also put one on top to isolate it from the Matek VTX Mini. The result is amazing! Comparing blackbox logs for both flights – with and without this shielding I found that noise amplitude dropped significantly. Also yax axis was very noisy in the spectrum analysis and this is just gone after installing these. Unfortunately I can’t post pictures here for you to see the difference but it’s day and night.
I ended up ordering 8 more of these to install in all of my quads.
Hey, I’m looking at adding these myself and had a QQ around the installation. Given it’s copper, do you need to isolate it from contacting any metal, or other parts like FC, screws(I use metal screws for FC, ESC)?
yes you do need insulation between the ESC and shielding.
Wouldn’t it be better to solder the shielding ground to the ESC ground instead of the FC?
By soldering to the FC you induce noise in the FC ground – which is what you want to avoid…
Does this really work?
I have a mamba f405 mk2 stack that came with this shielding, but I have never bothered adding it to the stack simply because I don’t like the way it looks (I know it’s dumb).
And also I have some white lines in the video feed in high throttle changes, so might give it a try.