Charging setups? Let's see them

If you have a power supply that can supply higher amps it shouldn't be a problem. Where are all the electrical engineers at haha

I agree with this.. but how do you plan to connect them all together in parrallel without having access to the male connector? How will they behave when one finishes charging before another and the power supply doesn't stop supplying voltage?
 
I agree with this.. but how do you plan to connect them all together in parrallel without having access to the male connector? How will they behave when one finishes charging before another and the power supply doesn't stop supplying voltage?
The factory charger is just a power supply that never stops supplying voltage - it's always there (assuming it's plugged in). The current draw is based on the individual battery's Intelligent charging circuitry.
 
This is not the case for the DJI Phantom 3 Intelligent battery. The battery has the charging, regulation and cell balancing circuitry built in. All we do is supply a power source and the intelligent battery does the rest.
Are you sure about this? How do you know that?
 
Are you sure about this? How do you know that?

I agree it is all built in. It's simple...there's only two prongs on the battery. No way to balance the cells with just two power inputs otherwise all multi-cell LiPos would only use two leads. Two leads for charging, the rest are for balancing. So the only way the DJI battery could function is to handle the balancing inside the battery pack.

Having to wait 4 hours for 3 LiPo's to finish charging is not ideal and this is all that I've seen available online. While I don't like babysitting them either, I would not feel comfortable with leaving them unattended for that long.. Someone needs to make a charging bar that can be connected to a suitable power supply so that all can be charged simultaneously.

A well known company in the RC charging arena, ProgressiveRC, is our best bet for a potential manufacturer of such a product. I think there's plenty of demand, they just don't realize it yet. Maybe if enough of us ask them to add this to their product line, they will change their mind..

There is a such a product: http://smartpowercharge.com/proddetail.php?prod=SPCP3

But to me the price did not make sense. I can get 4 DJI chargers for $240.00 or pay $489.00 for this 3rd party product. Sure it looks cool, has some interesting features, and gets rid of the rats nest of wires, but is that worth $249.00? For me the answer was no. If it could charge P2, P3, and I1 batteries then the cost benefit would start to be more apparent.
 
Are you sure about this? How do you know that?
There are a few simple ways to know this for sure.
1 - The DJI web page for the battery, here http://store.dji.com/product/phantom-3-intelligent-flight-battery states "Integrated power management and balanced charging capability"
2 - The "charger" has only 2 contacts, lacking the necessary balance inputs.
3 - The "charger" actually has printed on it "AC power adapter" and "power supply", but nowhere does it say "charger".
 
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Ha. This is all way over my head. I will continue to read and once a viable solution is apparent then I will follow suit. Enjoying this very much.
 
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I do like the way they did the Inspire multi-charger, in that it chargers them one-by-one based on current charge level. That's a pretty cool idea. I'm not sure it would work with the P3 batteries, but only because I don't know if there is voltage on the contacts without the battery being turned on. Hey! I'll check that right now...
 
I would like to know how to obtain 17.5 volt power supply....
( not interested in Efuel or such units, $$$ ) :)
 
There are a few simple ways to know this for sure.
1 - The DJI web page for the battery, here http://store.dji.com/product/phantom-3-intelligent-flight-battery states "Integrated power management and balanced charging capability"
2 - The "charger" has only 2 contacts, lacking the necessary balance inputs.
3 - The "charger" actually has printed on it "AC power adapter" and "power supply", but nowhere does it say "charger".

Since DJI does not publish any useful information on this matter we all have to guess.
However having said this the balancing is done in the battery not in the charger.
A charger can be anything that delivers power.
The DJI-charger is internally stabilized (educated guess). I have measured the voltage with a oscilloscope. Without any loading approximately 17,5 V. With a 2 amp load still 17 volt and only a small ripple. This small difference and small ripple says that the charger is internally stabilized.
I wil measure later how big the current is if you load an near empty (10%) battery.

The charger is rated as a 100w charger but if you take the full 100w out of it over a longer period the charger will burn out. Thats for sure. Just think on a 100W bulb, how hot these guys get and they have a much better heat dissipation than our charger.

A charger for four batteries must deliver around 400watts stabilized. A good and a safe (overload, overheat protection ect.) one will be expensive.
 
Since DJI does not publish any useful information on this matter we all have to guess.
However having said this the balancing is done in the battery not in the charger.
A charger can be anything that delivers power.
The DJI-charger is internally stabilized (educated guess). I have measured the voltage with a oscilloscope. Without any loading approximately 17,5 V. With a 2 amp load still 17 volt and only a small ripple. This small difference and small ripple says that the charger is internally stabilized.
I wil measure later how big the current is if you load an near empty (10%) battery.

The charger is rated as a 100w charger but if you take the full 100w out of it over a longer period the charger will burn out. Thats for sure. Just think on a 100W bulb, how hot these guys get and they have a much better heat dissipation than our charger.

A charger for four batteries must deliver around 400watts stabilized. A good and a safe (overload, overheat protection ect.) one will be expensive.
Yah, it's just a good regulated power supply. But pretty much everything has the charging circuitry built in these days anyway, including the tablets we all use on the P3.
 
Ha. This is all way over my head. I will continue to read and once a viable solution is apparent then I will follow suit. Enjoying this very much.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to operate one of these, but it would help if you are. It takes a lot of learning, reading and research to be up to snuff on one of these. There are guys that stay on this forum all day long. They live and breath Phantom. I don't know when they have time to actually go out and fly, because no matter when I check in, they are here.
 
I want to use my Polaron EX Combo to charge all 3 of my batteries simultaneously, but have yet to find what I need. Sucks too because right now it's in the box. Worked great when charging multiple Yuneec Q500 batteries.


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I have measured the current when loading the lipo. At 20% the current draw is 6,1Amps. the voltage is lowered to 15,8V. That means it consumes around 95Watts of power.

I have to do a full deep loading later on and then I wil measure the current again.
 
I know that in desperation when I left my charger at home and went camping, that you can shove two bared ends of 6mm auto-electrical wire up into the sockets on the DJI batteries, and run them to the car battery, and if you turn the DJI battery on, it will start to charge up. It got me through a weekend without a charger. I only did this to my two oldest dodgiest batteries. Funnily enough, whilst the battery never actually turns off the LEDs to say it's finished charging, one of those batteries showed 100% on the screen of the Black Pearl when it was turned on, and I've never had any battery show 100%, even brand new and straight off the charger, they normally show 96-98%
I got quite standard flight times from the two batteries I charged that way, and they've since continued charging just like normal batteries since getting them home and putting them on the mains electric charger.

My long term out bush charging plan is to own 3x actual 240v chargers (already own them). Mount them into a neat tidy fan cooled unit, with the 3 separate plugs mounted on the unit with slots to sit the batteries in, and then use a big-arse inverter that is running off two 12v car batteries hooked up in parallel.
Those will be kept charged by a 200W solar panel on the roof of the 4WD.
I'm just not sure yet what size inverter I'm going to need, and I do realise that an inverter that size is going to fairly suck the twin batteries pretty hard. But I also doubt I'll have much need of running this setup more than about twice a day at most.
 
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