Reliable Car Charger for Phantom 3 pro
- Thread starter Rod Carnochan77
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alokbhargava
Premium Pilot
There are many car chargers available on Amazon. Look at the review and pickup one. They are in different price range. The cheapest with good review is :
http://www.amazon.com/Charger-Adapt...ed/dp/B010UZMQU6#immersive-view_1457591964717
http://www.amazon.com/Charger-Adapt...ed/dp/B010UZMQU6#immersive-view_1457591964717
I've had good success with the charger in alokbhargava's post above. My only criticism is that it is slower than using the plug-in charger - it takes about 90 minutes to charge from 20%.
Ralph, I appreciate your opinion on the charger. I'm looking for a car charger now. It's been a few months now and I was wondering if you have had any bad experiences with your charger? (Killed a battery or the like.)
Pay attention to the car chargers. Some have a plug for the controller, some don't. I would still go with the inverter and use your stock charger, though. This one seems to work for most people.
http://amzn.com/B004MDXS0U
http://amzn.com/B004MDXS0U
In my view, using an inverter and the regular wall plug charger is costly, inefficient and potentially damaging (tho' probably not) to the charger.
First, an inverter that supplies a well-formed 60 hz sine wave is going to cost several times what a car charger does. Sure there are cheap inverters out there, but they do either square wave or modified sine wave that can wreck havoc on modern electronics.
Second, all the car charger needs to do is transform the 12v DC to 17.X DC to charge the battery. When using an inverter it must 1) transform 12v DC to 110v AC, then your charger 2) transforms 110v AC to 17.X volt DC. These are two inefficient processes, to say nothing of involving multiple boxes and cables.
Third, chargers are fairly resilient devices, but feeding them low-quality, inverter-created AC power potentially can damage them. Again, probably not, but why do it in the first place?
Here is a very good video, done by a knowledgable guy, on the car charger available on Amazon:
First, an inverter that supplies a well-formed 60 hz sine wave is going to cost several times what a car charger does. Sure there are cheap inverters out there, but they do either square wave or modified sine wave that can wreck havoc on modern electronics.
Second, all the car charger needs to do is transform the 12v DC to 17.X DC to charge the battery. When using an inverter it must 1) transform 12v DC to 110v AC, then your charger 2) transforms 110v AC to 17.X volt DC. These are two inefficient processes, to say nothing of involving multiple boxes and cables.
Third, chargers are fairly resilient devices, but feeding them low-quality, inverter-created AC power potentially can damage them. Again, probably not, but why do it in the first place?
Here is a very good video, done by a knowledgable guy, on the car charger available on Amazon:
I've used the P3 car charger for some time and it works great. I did a quick review of it that you can check out here. We sell them on our website if you still need one.
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Inverters rock. I got one that looks like a cup of coffee and has 2 plugs plus a usb charger. In between flights, going to a new destination, it I charging my batteries.
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The only problem I saw with the car chargers that plug into the car's power outlet is that the car has to be on for about an hour to charge the battery for my P3A.
So I looked into getting a portable power pack and found this 5-in-1 Portable Power Pack with Jump Start . It has 2 AC power outlets in the back, a USB outlet to charge USB devices, as well as other neat features like being able to jump start a car if needed. I have tested it out and does charge 2 batteries at the same time in about an hour. The only downside is that the power pack does take about 24 to 30 hours to charge back up and it costs a little over $100, but for me the advantages far outweigh the downsides.
So I looked into getting a portable power pack and found this 5-in-1 Portable Power Pack with Jump Start . It has 2 AC power outlets in the back, a USB outlet to charge USB devices, as well as other neat features like being able to jump start a car if needed. I have tested it out and does charge 2 batteries at the same time in about an hour. The only downside is that the power pack does take about 24 to 30 hours to charge back up and it costs a little over $100, but for me the advantages far outweigh the downsides.
I agree with some of what you say. However there are some things that I do not.
First, inverters are not as efficient as a direct linear DC regulator. And yes, they are commonly not as efficient as DC > DC chargers. Also, not all inverters are created equally and some, indeed, do not supply a perfect sine wave and can cause issues with some electronics so there you are also correct. And yes, its another box.
However, there are circumstances where an inverter may well be a better choice than a dedicated device charger/adapter. I personally prefer to have devices that are not dedicated one use devices where possible and practical. Those involve unique car chargers which I despise with a passion. Its just more junk to pack along that only does one thing and if you forget that one charger you can't use any other and you are screwed. I have found over the years that purchasing a decent inverter is actually cheaper in the long run than buying specific car chargers for a single device or use. The inverter is universal in nature and supplies AC which can be used for any device. And since almost every device you purchase has a AC adapter with it to charge or operate it, you already have everything needed for your car use.
Your description on what a inverter > charger process does is also accurate. However, the SAME process happens in a DC > DC charger/converter where the output voltage is the same or exceeds the input voltage. Internally these chargers contain buck converters. These take the 12v DC (actually more than 13v typically) from your car and converts it to high frequency AC then they rectify and filter that back to 17vDC to charge the battery. So you see, the process is nearly identical in that DC > AC > DC process happens with both the inverter scenario and the dedicated car charger scenario. The difference is that the AC produced can't be used for anything else in the dedicated charger scenario while its available for any standard 120v home device in the inverter scenario.
Today, most electronics operate on DC. DC supplied from wall warts and other PSUs. Nearly all of which will operate on modified sine or square waves. I don't have an expensive inverter and it produces a modified sine wave. Would I plug my desktop PC into it? No. But have and frequently do plug the PSU for multiple laptopts into it since I know how they operate. Chargers for phones and tablets are virtually identical and will operate just fine on a moderately priced inverter. Not a lot of electronics you would likely want to use in your car requires a pure sine wave anymore.
I keep an inverter under the back seat of the truck for trips. One inverter. One plug to plug into the truck. The kids and maryann can all plug in their tablet chargers, their phone chargers, and my wall wart to recharge my portable flashlight. And the same inverter is used with the charger that came with my P3A (I leave the one for the P3P at home and leave the P3A charger in the truck). I can also recharge the battery packs for my bullseye camera while at the range. So the inverter is a single device with myriad of uses. A P3 car charger has but one use.
An inverter may not be the best choice for everyone, but it should not be so easily dismissed as not ever being the best choice, even being slightly more inefficient as far as power goes. And, yes, its another box and cables. What it brings to the table is universality and ease of use across multiple products.
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What kind of inverter are you using with the 100W Phantom charger? Watts and normal inverter, modified sine wave or Pure sine wave?
This is the one I am currently using. I purchased this something like a decade ago for use while traveling to charge laptops and such.
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Wolfiesden, Thanks for this reply and greetings from South Africa. This looks like a normal square wave inverter to me? An you are charging batteries for the P3 Pro with the 100W AC charger? Wow, that is great stuff, because I have a 350W inverter permanent in my car, which I use for all the other RC battery charging, but it does not want to accept the DJI 100W charger at all and always throws out an alarm and simple trip. So I thought that I actually need a much bigger inverter, something bigger than 1800W, like a 2000W?
I have used it with the P3P's charger. But, most of the time I leave the 100w P3P charger at home and I take the one that came with my P3A (which is smaller physically) and the 4 bay charging station with me when I go out. I can't run the P3P charger and my laptop at the same time off 200w. So I choose to use the smaller one which IIRC is 57w. I leave the P3A's charger and the inverter under the back seat of the truck all the time. I only take the 4 bay adapter with me in and out.
The inverter I have is a modified sine wave not a square wave. Its basically a stepped square though.
200 Watt Power Inverter | General Power Batteries Tucson AZ
The inverter I have is a modified sine wave not a square wave. Its basically a stepped square though.
200 Watt Power Inverter | General Power Batteries Tucson AZ
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Wolfiesden, you are too kind to reply, thanks for that. So it looks like you have a normal inverter, I guess just like mine, but the only difference is that you are using the 57w charger, which normally comes with the Standard and the Advance P3? So it looks like the start-up current for the 100w charger is just too much for the normal inverters.
As I said, I have and do use the 100w. I choose not to because its a bigger brick than the smaller 57w. Also, I can run the 57w and the charger for my laptop at the same time. If I try to run the 100w charger and my laptop charger the inverter scrams and shuts down.
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