Charging setups? Let's see them

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been reading about how our batteries have a built in charger all we have to do is supply it with voltage. Who has made a setup for a dual or triple charge. What power supply are you using?
 
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I bought one of those 8-9 dollar charging bars from China and have only charged 1 battery with it although it can charge 3 at a time. Hope to use it more when I need more than one battery ready.
 
I have seen the
I bought one of those 8-9 dollar charging bars from China and have only charged 1 battery with it although it can charge 3 at a time. Hope to use it more when I need more than one battery ready.
I got 4 official DJI chargers. And by the way I would never use one of those charger bars, as far as I know DJI does not make one and there's a reason for that. DJI doesn't even recommend charging the transmitter and a battery at the same time, what do you think 3 batteries hooked to the same charger will do?
 
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I have seen the

I got 4 official DJI chargers. And by the way I would never use one of those charger bars, as far as I know DJI does not make one and there's a reason for that. DJI doesn't even recommend charging the transmitter and a battery at the same time, what do you think 3 batteries hooked to the same charger will do?

The reason DJI doesn't sell the charging bar is because it further complicates the charging process. Parallel charging, which is how these charge bars work, has rules you must follow in order to do so safely. For example, you must ensure that the LiPo's you're about to charge are at the same state of charge. If they're not at the same state of charge, the moment they're plugged into the charge bar, they will begin to transfer energy between one another until their states of charge balances. This can be a bad thing if you plug in a fully charged battery with an empty one.. Energy can transfer at a high enough rate which could lead to a fire.

Besides that, you also must only charge LiPo's of similar health. This is where things get difficult considering that DJI does not show you what the internal resistance is within the cells. Without this info, it's almost impossible to know for sure.
 
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The reason DJI doesn't sell the charging bar is because it further complicates the charging process. Parallel charging, which is how these charge bars work, has rules you must follow in order to do so safely. For example, you must ensure that the LiPo's you're about to charge are at the same state of charge. If they're not at the same state of charge, the moment they're plugged into the charge bar, they will begin to transfer energy between one another until their states of charge balance. This can be a bad thing if you plug in a fully charged battery with an empty one.. Energy can transfer at a high enough rate which could lead to a fire.
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.
 
The reason DJI doesn't sell the charging bar is because it further complicates the charging process. Parallel charging, which is how these charge bars work, has rules you must follow in order to do so safely. For example, you must ensure that the LiPo's you're about to charge are at the same state of charge. If they're not at the same state of charge, the moment they're plugged into the charge bar, they will begin to transfer energy between one another until their states of charge balances. This can be a bad thing if you plug in a fully charged battery with an empty one.. Energy can transfer at a high enough rate which could lead to a fire.

Besides that, you also must only charge LiPo's of similar health. This is where things get difficult considering that DJI does not show you what the internal resistance is within the cells. Without this info, it's almost impossible to know for sure.

My guess is that DJI will come out with one. I only think so because they developed one for the inspire 1.

http://www.dji.com/info/releases/dji-inspire-1
 
The reason DJI doesn't sell the charging bar is because it further complicates the charging process. Parallel charging, which is how these charge bars work, has rules you must follow in order to do so safely. For example, you must ensure that the LiPo's you're about to charge are at the same state of charge. If they're not at the same state of charge, the moment they're plugged into the charge bar, they will begin to transfer energy between one another until their states of charge balance. This can be a bad thing if you plug in a fully charged battery with an empty one.. Energy can transfer at a high enough rate which could lead to a fire.

This is not true. The charger-bars are easily and complete protected from exchanging energy between lipo's by means of a single diode in each channel. You only lose 0,7 volts when you use diodes. But this is not a problem because the charger has enough surplus-voltage.
Their is not so much use for these charger bars because the standard (professional) DJI chargers cannot deliver enough current to charge 4 lipo's at once at full current.. Apart from the serious risk of overheating the whole charging proces is severely slowed down because of lack of sufficient current.
 
Besides, does anyone else's charger for the Pro (100W version) get super hot when charging a battery from a low state? **** mine gets warm. I mean, not burning me "hot", but warmer than the battery. Haha
 
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.
This is also not how it works. The DJI-lipo can receive current (the charging proces and indeed it has all the necessary electronics inside.) and it can deliver current ( the loading proces to the motors ect.)
The lipo doesn't know or it is loading a motor or an adjacent other lipo with a lower voltage.
 
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This is also not how it works. The DJI-lipo can receive current (the charging proces and indeed it has all the necessary electronics inside.) and it can deliver current ( the loading proces to the motors ect.)
The lipo doesn't know or it is loading a motor or an adjacent other lipo with a lower voltage.
You've tested that? The Intelligent part doesn't limit current flow based on the current state (ie. ON or charging)? I'm asking because I don't know. I assume it could. After all, it's Intelligent. Haha Currently our town is without power (yup, whole town) so I can't test this right now.

Update - 4:00 am estimated time of repair. Ugh...

And, isn't that based on the battery being ON or not? It obviously knows when it's being charged and current is being supplied or it would act as it does. And when "turning on" the battery it supplies current to the Phantom. So it obviously knows what state it is in.
 
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You've tested that? The Intelligent part doesn't limit current flow based on the current state (ie. ON or charging)? I'm asking because I don't know. I assume it could. After all, it's Intelligent. Haha Currently our town is without power (yup, whole town) so I can't test this right now.

Update - 4:00 am estimated time of repair. Ugh...
You have your point. I did not tested it and I did not think that you charge the lipo in its off state.
However its switching on and off is software(electronics) based, so in my opinion (I'm more careful now which my statements) as soon as you start charging it will be switched on and after that it it possible for the current to flow in two directions.
You should mention that an adjacent lipo with a lower voltage performs a shortcut as it were fore the lipo with the higher voltage.
But again I should test this but I don't have a charger-bar.
But as I stated in my earlier post; its very easy to protect this with a single diode and I think the charger bars have a form of protection.
 
The reason DJI doesn't sell the charging bar is because it further complicates the charging process....

I think the reason is way simpler....the charger simply cannot handle that much of a load and if you ask it to you are also asking for a LiPo or charger fire.

My guess is that DJI will come out with one. I only think so because they developed one for the inspire 1.

http://www.dji.com/info/releases/dji-inspire-1

I disagree, if you look closely at that picture it only shows a single battery actually charging. There is no way a charger that should not even charge the transmitter and battery at the same time can charge 4 batteries safely. With their "smart hub" it looks like what it is doing is it is charging each battery one at a time until it is full then going to the next battery.

Bottom line is I would never use one of those charging bars unless I was trying to burn my house down and there is no way that one of those $8 bars will not greatly shorten the life of a $60 charger.

EDIT: I just read the text below the picture, it says exactly what I thought:

DJI is pleased to announce the Inspire 1 Battery Charging Hub, an intelligent battery charging solution that enables you to charge up to four Inspire 1 batteries. Small and easy to carry, the charging hub automatically selects the individual battery with the highest amount of remaining power, and charges it until full before moving on to the next battery. The entire process is monitored and each battery’s status is shown using LED indicators, making the charging process simple and easy
 
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What I have never understood about those charging bars, is they still use the DJI charger. It would be like hooking up 4 water hoses to the same water "spigot" (whatever you want to call it) at once and thinking you will get 4 times the amount of water,,,you won't. The limiting factor is still what the DJI charger can produce without overheating and burning up.

You could take 4 DJI chargers and put them in a case, and they could charge 4 batteries at once,,it would really just be four individual chargers acting individually, each with its own transformer, etc.,,
 
What I have never understood about those charging bars, is they still use the DJI charger. It would be like hooking up 4 water hoses to the same water "spigot" (whatever you want to call it) at once and thinking you will get 4 times the amount of water,,,you won't. The limiting factor is still what the DJI charger can produce without overheating and burning up.

You could take 4 DJI chargers and put them in a case, and they could charge 4 batteries at once,,it would really just be four individual chargers acting individually, each with its own transformer, etc.,,

I think everyone understands that, the benefit (if it doesn't kaboom your battery :eek: ) would be charging multiple batteries without having to disconnect one to add another. The time would be the same, you just wouldn't have to babysit them and swap them out.
 
I think everyone understands that, the benefit (if it doesn't kaboom your battery :eek: ) would be charging multiple batteries without having to disconnect one to add another. The time would be the same, you just wouldn't have to babysit them and swap them out.

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..
 
What I have never understood about those charging bars, is they still use the DJI charger. It would be like hooking up 4 water hoses to the same water "spigot" (whatever you want to call it) at once and thinking you will get 4 times the amount of water,,,you won't. The limiting factor is still what the DJI charger can produce without overheating and burning up.

You could take 4 DJI chargers and put them in a case, and they could charge 4 batteries at once,,it would really just be four individual chargers acting individually, each with its own transformer, etc.,,

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
 

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