Re: Charging Muliple PV batteries at once

[urgno]

The b6 is a smart charger I mainly use deans connectors but I can make anything. But I need to know the type of connector the battery would need

the fact is that the PV battery, don't need a lipo charger because each battery have the circuitry inside
to manage charging, balancing and the power button

I prepared a small adapter to be able to connect to the battery with cables

click to zoom

you only need to supply 12.3V @ 4A to the battery or if multiple batteries 4A x number of batteries

I still have to test the parallel charging but think with a diode on each adapter can be done without problems

 

[THell]

What did you use for connectors. Brand ert or link to purchase

 

[urgno]

What did you use for connectors. Brand ert or link to purchase

i just pulled the leads from a male deans connector, then soldered them on the back of HXT 4mm connectors
then pushed them inside the red plastic protector then bended them to fit the PV battery

Deans

HXT 4mm

 

[THell]

Awesome thanks.

 

[Amra]

Hey, I have a leisure battery with these car plug outlets attached to the terminals like this:

How would you go about safely charging from a leisure battery like mine? If I could do that, and be able to charge 3 batteries at a time, that would be fantastic.

 

[Pull_Up]

Buy a 12volt DC to [whatever your mains voltage is] inverter and then you can use the Vision charger from your leisure battery. It draws a max current of 1.8A at mains voltage and take between 60 and 90 mins to charge a Vision battery, so you'd need to do the relevant calculations to work out how many batteries you can do before your leisure battery is drained. If you have a big enough battery/batteries and a 2 or 3 socket inverter you could run two or three chargers. This is the "no hassle", if equipment heavy way!

If you want to connect the batteries direct then you're going to need a steady 12.6 volts DC supply and 4 amps per battery (so 12 amps for 3 batteries at once), modify connectors to fit the DJI batteries, add in relevant safety features (like diodes and fuses), house all the bits and cope with the fact that if anything goes wrong with your battery (even unrelated to charging) you've blown any warranty by not using the DJI approved charger.

 

[urgno]

cope with the fact that if anything goes wrong with your battery (even unrelated to charging) you've blown any warranty by not using the DJI approved charger.

who is gonna tell them that you wan't charging the battery with dji charger ? :mrgreen: :lol:

 

[Pull_Up]

cope with the fact that if anything goes wrong with your battery (even unrelated to charging) you've blown any warranty by not using the DJI approved charger.

who is gonna tell them that you wan't charging the battery with dji charger ? :mrgreen: :lol:

The secret software that's also recording your every move... Keep the lens cover on your Vision at all times and store the aircraft in a lead-lined box.

That, or talking about doing it on a public forum.

 

[Amra]

If you want to connect the batteries direct then you're going to need a steady 12.6 volts DC supply and 4 amps per battery (so 12 amps for 3 batteries at once), modify connectors to fit the DJI batteries, add in relevant safety features (like diodes and fuses), house all the bits and cope with the fact that if anything goes wrong with your battery (even unrelated to charging) you've blown any warranty by not using the DJI approved charger.

Sorry to necro this thread, very helpful reply and it's the one most relevant to my question.

My DJI smart battery has a faulty cell (cell #2) after a gentle crash, which won't top up for some reason. I bought a new battery, which works just fine. Hoping to save the old battery some time as well by force charging it with some advanced charger.

Anyway I have this adapter to charge 3x PV 2 batteries at once in parallel:


They say the PV2 batteries can be charged at 8amps, so double the charge up rate, with this I could easily manage with 3 batteries and my 75AH leisure battery.

So all I need is a 12.6V 16A (because I'll never have more than 2 batteries connected at once that need full amperage charging) power supply I can connect directly to my leisure battery, preferably with a lighter plug. Am I making sense?
Can anyone recommend me a charger for that purpose? I would appreciate it.

I also need a smart charger for the faulty battery to see if it I can be fixed, I was thinking the Imax B6. But since balancing & everything is done on-board the battery, I have no idea if it will actually help at all, I'm thinking I'd need to do some sort of modification to be allowed to balance it from a smart charger and not onboard.

 

[Pull_Up]

Most of your questions are well above my technical pay grade but there's no point plugging a smart charger into a smart battery. As you rightly say, there's no balance plug to handle that side of things because the on-board electronics deal with that. Then, if you manage to somehow divorce it from its smart circuit it won't work with a Vision/P2 again because the smart circuit also includes a signal that's sent to the flight controller to verify it's a genuine DJI battery. Without the appropriate call-and-response you won't be able to take off...

 

[Amra]

Most of your questions are well above my technical pay grade but there's no point plugging a smart charger into a smart battery. As you rightly say, there's no balance plug to handle that side of things because the on-board electronics deal with that. Then, if you manage to somehow divorce it from its smart circuit it won't work with a Vision/P2 again because the smart circuit also includes a signal that's sent to the flight controller to verify it's a genuine DJI battery. Without the appropriate call-and-response you won't be able to take off...

I thought as much, but I will keep the old battery anyway, maybe some time in the future I will figure out a way to save it. The P2V drone can fly for about 5 minutes on it without complaining, but the cells aren't balanced and it's obviously not safe. (I've just tested this by hovering right above the ground.)

 

[NEILS]

Anyone spotted these yet

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DJI-Phant...Control_Parts_Accessories&hash=item19e9a1baba

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DJI-Phant...Control_Parts_Accessories&hash=item1c3d5c4034

 

[Amra]

Yeah I got that adapter, or at least a similar one. Wasn't so ridiculously overpriced though, cost me around 25$ on ebay at the time, it's probably easy for someone to make that is handy with those things, I can't say I am. That power supply will work well with someone charging of mains or through an inverter, but I would prefer a straight to lighter plug dc charger for my leisure battery.

 

[NEILS]

Yeah I got that adapter, or at least a similar one. Wasn't so ridiculously overpriced though, cost me around 25$ on ebay at the time, it's probably easy for someone to make that is handy with those things, I can't say I am. That power supply will work well with someone charging of mains or through an inverter, but I would prefer a straight to lighter plug dc charger for my leisure battery.

Thank you amra, you've got me thinking now, maybe vero board would do the trick or dig out me etching tank lol, is there any chance if you have time could you post a close up picture of one of the sets of battery pins please, I'm after seeing if there standard pcb mounting spade connectors.

Thanks Neil

 

[Amra]

There's a picture on the last page. I tried the pins on my defect battery but they wouldn't slide all the way in since they aren't straight, but I can't test if that's a problem until I get a charger.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

 

[NEILS]

There's a picture on the last page. I tried the pins on my defect battery but they wouldn't slide all the way in since they aren't straight, but I can't test if that's a problem until I get a charger.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

I need my eyes testing :lol: , thanks for the info

 

[Amra]

Having scoured the net for a while, I think this might be what I'm looking for:

Cell Pro PowerLab 8


Will accept 12v batteries as input. Max charging output is 40A, I think that's with 24v input though. So 20A with my battery. It has balancing capabilities and all that, but I would simply use the output without that and set the amp ceiling in the software to whatever was appropriate to how many batteries I wanted to charge.

Expensive though, 170$ ish.

 

[NEILS]

If the p2v battery has its own charging circuit why can't you just plug the p2v battery into a 12v battery, I thought the p2v charger was just a 12.6v power supply?

 

[Amra]

If the p2v battery has its own charging circuit why can't you just plug the p2v battery into a 12v battery, I thought the p2v charger was just a 12.6v power supply?

Hmm I've thought of doing that as well. Does the battery itself know to draw 4 or 8 amps from the 12v leisure battery I wonder?

 

[NEILS]

I may be wrong about this so don't go trying until we have more info from others but I would have thought the p2v battery would draw the current it needed to charge the battery regardless of supply output?