This How-to is for those of you who (like me) want to be able to easily connect/disconnect wires to/from your flight controller while still maintaining a compact setup.

Now, I know some of you run only the signal wires from your ESC's, but if you want the ground connection as well (and you want to use pins), then here's a way to do it with double-row, right-angle header pins.

In the first picture below, at the bottom is an unmodified strip of double-row pins.  The trick is to push the "lower" pins as far as they will go into the plastic housing, and to push the "upper" pins out just enough to reach the third row of holes on the FC board.  I clipped off the desired number of pins first (4 in this case), and used a steel ruler and the carbon fiber leg of my frame to push the pins the correct amount (all 4 in each row at one time).  The result is shown at the top.



Now I didn't clip the "longer" lower pins until I soldered them to the FC, but you should probably do that first (see sirdude's post below).  Don't clip them to be flush with the upper pins - just clip enough (split the distance) so that your connector still has a full "grip" on the lower pin.

Next, you will need to modify your signal plug to get the ground and signal wires in adjacent holes.  I use a T-pin to remove the ground plug in this case and reposition it to the "center" hole.  I then use wire-cutters to cut away the plastic and file it with an emory board.



Then solder your pins in, clip the lower ones slightly to get a full grip (if you haven't already), and plug in your ESC.  Note, be sure to observe the correct "polarity".  I can tell on mine because the "rough" side of my connector (where I trimmed it) is "up".

   

Very nice mod Scotty!  I wish I had thought of that when I put my 160 together.     I'm wondering if the pins should be clipped after soldering without the FC fastened to something with a little more mass?  I've read where it can damage the gyros if clipped before the board is fastened in due to lack of mass to absorb the shock.  Please correct me if I'm wrong. 

(12-Aug-2016, 01:16 PM)sirdude Wrote: Very nice mod Scotty!  I wish I had thought of that when I put my 160 together.     I'm wondering if the pins should be clipped after soldering without the FC fastened to something with a little more mass?  I've read where it can damage the gyros if clipped before the board is fastened in due to lack of mass to absorb the shock.  Please correct me if I'm wrong. 

I dunno, I hadn't heard that - I guess we'll see on mine when I'm done.  It's probably best to clip them before soldering anyway. (I added a note above - thanks.)

trim the pins before soldering that is for sure gyros is one story, second is while clipping you might damage the solder joint.
secondly, how often you are disconnecting esc from FC? now you can program them on passthrough. so it is much easier to solder them directly, it takes few g of your quad
thirdly i'd recommend to use the 3 row pins, this way the upper pins will have the same "length" and amount of contact surface will be the same everywhere, with above shot i see on the fc that signal pins are longer than ground pins

(17-Aug-2016, 03:58 PM)Grisha0 Wrote: trim the pins before soldering that is for sure gyros is one story, second is while clipping you might damage the solder joint.
secondly, how often you are disconnecting esc from FC? now you can program them on passthrough. so it is much easier to solder them directly, it takes few g of your quad
thirdly i'd recommend to use the 3 row pins, this way the upper pins will have the same "length" and amount of contact surface will be the same everywhere, with above shot i see on the fc that signal pins are longer than ground pins

I am more concerned about the "height" of 3-row pins than I am about the length.  The length of the shorter pins engages the plug contacts sufficiently.  The extra row would add 2.54mm of height.  Yes, I wan't it that tight, but I still want the convenience of "unplugging" (for replacing esc's).

ok, my idea of trimming was exactly not the length but the height

this way you trim only on one side and on the other you have even length of pins
and it is still compact to use as you wish, adding height is not good as typically there is not much of a space on smaller frames