Hi. I'm new to owning a drone and was curious about how much power my Phantom 1 would draw. There are probably answers here, but I did a quick search and didn't see what I wanted, so I decided to start this link. Forgive me if it's "old news" and a duplicate of information that those of you who have owned drones for a long time are tired of seeing.
I connected my Phantom 1 to a 12VDC UPS battery which measured 12.6VDC nominal with no load. I used a precision shunt resistor with 0.05Ohms resistance and measured the following current draw at various loads:
No Load, standby (no motors running, GPS searching) 220 milliamps
Idle, motors spinning at idle speed 1,040 milliamps
Liftoff 9,000 milliamps (9A!)
Full Power 16,000 milliamps (16A)
The voltage at the drone terminals was about 10.9 VDC at the full power setting, so the power consumption was about 175 Watts at full power. No wonder a 3,000 Ah battery lasts only about 10 minutes! Looked at another way, my Phantom 1 pulls about 0.23 HP at full power (175 Watts/746 W per HP).
Again, thanks for bearing with me if this is "old hat." I'm an engineer and wanted to share some basic information.
I connected my Phantom 1 to a 12VDC UPS battery which measured 12.6VDC nominal with no load. I used a precision shunt resistor with 0.05Ohms resistance and measured the following current draw at various loads:
No Load, standby (no motors running, GPS searching) 220 milliamps
Idle, motors spinning at idle speed 1,040 milliamps
Liftoff 9,000 milliamps (9A!)
Full Power 16,000 milliamps (16A)
The voltage at the drone terminals was about 10.9 VDC at the full power setting, so the power consumption was about 175 Watts at full power. No wonder a 3,000 Ah battery lasts only about 10 minutes! Looked at another way, my Phantom 1 pulls about 0.23 HP at full power (175 Watts/746 W per HP).
Again, thanks for bearing with me if this is "old hat." I'm an engineer and wanted to share some basic information.