What CC/CV charger/balancers are you using?

[pious_greek]

What non-stock CC/CV lipo chargers/balancers are you using to charge your solo batteries?

I've seen Thunder AC680 and Turnigy Accucel 6 mentioned on the forum, and many people modding their stock charging cables with XT60 connectors.

 

[pyrate]

I ended up buying an extra and with the second solo picked up a third
had 5 batteries until yesterday now I have 6
Also have a 4 channel lipo charger I use on my DIY lipos. Never used it on solo batteries

 

[FVidrine]

I bought these from amazon. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019SYX7BM/ref=od_aui_detailpages01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I finished my 5 charger build today and waiting for the Molex connectors to come in tomorrow and will have it finished up then. Went ahead and set the voltage and current on all 5 yesterday. Until I have the Molex connectors set up I cant fully test all 5 but I did charge one from 7% and it charged at a much faster rate than the stock charger.

 

[pious_greek]

View attachment 4827 View attachment 4828 I bought these from amazon. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019SYX7BM/ref=od_aui_detailpages01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I finished my 5 charger build today and waiting for the Molex connectors to come in tomorrow and will have it finished up then. Went ahead and set the voltage and current on all 5 yesterday. Until I have the Molex connectors set up I cant fully test all 5 but I did charge one from 7% and it charged at a much faster rate than the stock charger.

where did you order the molex connectors from?

 

[FVidrine]

where did you order the molex connectors from?

https://www.arrow.com/en/products/4...43&utm_source=sas&SSAID=314743&utm_source=sas

 

[FVidrine]

Molex connectors came in today and finished them up. Looks nice and charges great!

 

[Jubalr]

Molex connectors came in today and finished them up. Looks nice and charges great!

Awesome job! All you have to do now is set a price and make a few.. I'm interested..

 

[FVidrine]

My buddy, who has 3 solo's also said he wanted one too. Let me gather the cost of all the parts and think about it. It takes a lot of work machining the box for the fans and XT-60 connectors. The parts get costly too when you make it to handle the 30 amps required. I also made a cable to plug in and clamp to car battery so it will charge when you don't have 120 VAC. I will let you know, thanks for the compliment.

 

[Jubalr]

My buddy, who has 3 solo's also said he wanted one too. Let me gather the cost of all the parts and think about it. It takes a lot of work machining the box for the fans and XT-60 connectors. The parts get costly too when you make it to Handel the 30 amps required. I also made a cable to plug in and clamp to car battery so it will charge when you don't have 120 VAC. I will let you know, thanks for the compliment.

Sure thing. Thanks. Put me on the list of those interested. Has to be worth your while though.

 

[SARDG]

Molex connectors came in today and finished them up. Looks nice and charges great!

That is a crazy-nice job!

 

[FVidrine]

That is a crazy-nice job!

Thanks!

 

[FVidrine]

Awesome job! All you have to do now is set a price and make a few.. I'm interested..

After figuring out what parts cost, its rather high. For it to be worth my wild I would have to sell it at $350.

If anyone is interested please message me.

 

[Jubalr]

Sure, if it is charging 5 at 5-6a each and charging to 100% I'll give it a try.

 

[FVidrine]

Sure, if it is charging 5 at 5-6a each and charging to 100% I'll give it a try.

Yes it charges 5 battery's at 5 - 5.5A each. Two things I have found.
1. 30A power supply, if you put each at 6A you max the supply out. Power supply can handle it but will get hot and not the best idea to max a supply out. Note 2 explains why I didnt go with a much larger power supply.
2. What I have found is the battery will allow up to 6A if its below 75% charged. After it reaches 75% charge it looks for a trickle charge and if you have the current regulator set at 6A it will start to turn on and off. To resolve this I had to set the regulators right below 5.5A. That allows the battery to charge from dead to full without any issues and stays within a total of 25A - 27.5A and wont max the supply out.

 

[PdxSteve]

Yes it charges 5 battery's at 5 - 5.5A each. Two things I have found.
1. 30A power supply, if you put each at 6A you max the supply out. Power supply can handle it but will get hot and not the best idea to max a supply out. Note 2 explains why I didnt go with a much larger power supply.
2. What I have found is the battery will allow up to 6A if its below 75% charged. After it reaches 75% charge it looks for a trickle charge and if you have the current regulator set at 6A it will start to turn on and off. To resolve this I had to set the regulators right below 5.5A. That allows the battery to charge from dead to full without any issues and stays within a total of 25A - 27.5A and wont max the supply out.

That's not entirely accurate. It will take a 6A charge no matter what level the battery is at. The problem is how you are calibrating/tuning the cc/cv. You need to use something other than one of the batteries to tune it to 6A, because as soon as you hook the battery up to it the battery starts charging making your 6A a moving target since the amperage starts to immediately drop. You need to put a dummy/constant load on the cc/cv when tuning. Something that will pull more than 6A, like a car battery or dummy load. Once I did that and got them perfectly dialed in to 6a/16.8v, they charged the batteries no matter what level they were at and never power cycled again.

Here are some charts I made using actual battery data coming of the smbus when charging. It shows the amps dropping off (move your mouse over the lines to see the readings) as the battery charges. Look in the lower right part of the screen for the graphs.
Charging 3DR Solo Batteries - JSFiddle

The battery draws the most amps when completely discharged and it curves down from there as it's charging. So if you try to calibrate the charger for 6A on a battery that isn't completely discharged you are setting it wrong because when you try to charge the same battery at 10%, the cc/cv will be putting out more than 6A which will cause the power cycling.

 

[FVidrine]

That's not entirely accurate. It will take a 6A charge no matter what level the battery is at. The problem is how you are calibrating/tuning the cc/cv. You need to use something other than one of the batteries to tune it to 6A, because as soon as you hook the battery up to it the battery starts charging making your 6A a moving target since the amperage starts to immediately drop. You need to put a dummy/constant load on the cc/cv when tuning. Something that will pull more than 6A, like a car battery or dummy load. Once I did that and got them perfectly dialed in to 6a/16.8v, they charged the batteries no matter what level they were at and never power cycled again.

Here are some charts I made using actual battery data coming of the smbus when charging. It shows the amps dropping off (move your mouse over the lines to see the readings) as the battery charges. Look in the lower right part of the screen for the graphs.
Charging 3DR Solo Batteries - JSFiddle

The battery draws the most amps when completely discharged and it curves down from there as it's charging. So if you try to calibrate the charger for 6A on a battery that isn't completely discharged you are setting it wrong because when you try to charge the same battery at 10%, the cc/cv will be putting out more than 6A which will cause the power cycling.

Thanks Steve, I did use a static load to set the current. I ended up moving the current setting to 5.5A to insure the 12VDC 30A charger doesn't overload. I really liked your graphs and see you also used 5.5A as the max current setting. Nice work by the way!

 

[VCD]

Using the beforementioned CC,CV PSU's , how hot do they get, or need active cooling stepping up from 12v, (like PB battery) and charging at 5A ?

If I were to use firmware-modified standard chargers (like chaeli-charger), I would have reverse-polarity protection, (and maybe higher efficiency, no need for cooling)

unless we 3D print a 3DR pack docking, or vacuum form it.. using this solution - does it have any polarity reversal protection ?

 

[Jubalr]

Using the beforementioned CC,CV PSU's , how hot do they get, or need active cooling stepping up from 12v, (like PB battery) and charging at 5A ?

If I were to use firmware-modified standard chargers (like chaeli-charger), I would have reverse-polarity protection, (and maybe higher efficiency, no need for cooling)

unless we 3D print a 3DR pack docking, or vacuum form it.. using this solution - does it have any polarity reversal protection ?

In the pics of his build, you can see polarity protection on both ends of the cables. They can only be plugged in 1 way.

 

[FVidrine]

Using the beforementioned CC,CV PSU's , how hot do they get, or need active cooling stepping up from 12v, (like PB battery) and charging at 5A ?

If I were to use firmware-modified standard chargers (like chaeli-charger), I would have reverse-polarity protection, (and maybe higher efficiency, no need for cooling)

unless we 3D print a 3DR pack docking, or vacuum form it.. using this solution - does it have any polarity reversal protection ?

The CC/CV regulators get pretty hot when at full charge. I can tell you that this design with two cooling fans is overkill but I didnt want any over heating.

As Jubalr said, the plugs can only be put in one direction giving you the polarity protection needed. The Plug I made for the Car battery is color coded for the battery posts and can be reversed if you don't pay attention but nothing can be done about that. The reason I stayed with 12 VDC is so I could use my Auto battery to charge if needed.

I have been using the charger over the last week, the charge time is much less than the stock charger. I didnt build this to make money, I was looking to solve an issue with taking a full day to charge the 10 batteries I have and as we all know it doesn't take long to use up a full backpack of batteries. I wanted to be able to get 10 batteries at full charge in 2 hrs.

 

[TreyL]

On a related power system note....anyone thought of what they would do if all of their stock batteries died and how to hack a new lipo into the case? I heard a rumor someone has posted a video of opening one up, but havent had the time to try to track it down. Similarly....anyone have a acc bay connector and using it to carry a second lipo underneath?