To save additional weight, two thick 1.5 mm² wires were used for the power supply, and a thin 0.25 mm² wire for the signal. This allows for a further 27% weight reduction.

Product Description

The PowerBus enables a completely new approach to servo cabling. The PowerBus consists of a three-wire cable that supplies connected servos with power and signals. At first glance, this seems unremarkable, but the major difference lies in the signal line. With conventional servo signals, information can only be transmitted for a single servo at a time—via a PWM-modulated signal, also known as pulse width modulation. In a servo bus system, information for multiple servos is transmitted digitally. The information for the individual servos is addressed. Because each individual servo is assigned an address, the servo—provided it has a decoder—can read its information from the data stream and convert it into a movement of the rudder. By using a PowerBus to PWM adapter, servos without decoders can also be used; the adapter handles the decoding.

The advantage here is obvious: you only need a three-wire cable to supply multiple servos with different signals. Wiring is significantly simpler and results in a considerable weight reduction.
However, there is also a disadvantage: if the bus line is blocked by a short circuit in one servo, all servos connected to that bus line lose their function. PowerBox-Systems has completely eliminated this previous drawback:
The servo distributors we developed in-house are fully protected against short circuits on both the power supply and the signal line! This means that a short-circuited output on a servo distributor is shut down within a few microseconds, and the bus line remains unblocked.