Batteries

General Battery Information

• LoCO uses four 3s 8000mAh 30C LiPo batteries, two batteries in each tube.
• Battery beaks are used to determine voltage readings and low battery warnings. More information on battery beak usage can be found here.
• Before operating LoCO, attach battery beaks to check current voltage.
  • A 3s battery has 3 cells in series, so at the battery minimum of 9V, each cell will be at 3V. Discharging below this level will permanently damage the batteries.
  • At the 12.6V maximum for the battery, each cell will be at 4.2V.
• One beak per tube is used during LoCO operations, as the two batteries should have the same voltage if charged correctly.
• Steps to charge the batteries using the IRVLAB's Paraboard setup can be found here.

How to use a battery beak

A battery beak is used to measure the voltage of a battery and trigger a warning when a battery is almost dead.

Plug the battery beak into the balance charging cable so the leftmost pin of the battery beak is in the negative terminal of the balance charging cable. The battery beak should emit two loud beeps.

Reading voltage

The battery beak will begin cycling through the overall voltage of the battery, and individual cell voltages.

ALL - This is the one we care about. 3s (3 cell) batteries should be 9V when fully discharged (never go below this), and 12.6V when fully charged.

-1-

-2-

-3-

The number following each of these headers is the voltage for each cell. A 3s battery has 3 cells in series, so at the battery minimum of 9V, each cell will be at 3V. At the 12.6V maximum for the battery, each cell will be at 4.2V.

Setting an alarm

Press the momentary button on the top of the battery beak once. This will change the display to the current minimum voltage. Once the battery reaches this voltage, the alarm will trigger.

To change the minimum threshold, keep pressing the button until you reach the desired voltage. Note, an OFF option is available.

The recommended minimum threshold is 3.2V. If we wait until 3.0V/cell, the warning only sounds when the battery is completely dead. We don't want this, as it could permanently damage the batteries.

Only use 1 battery beak per tube as the voltage between the two batteries in the same tube will be exactly the same. No sense in draining more power!

Charging batteries with the Paraboard

Please read all instructions and follow the steps, otherwise you might hurt yourself the batteries!

Precautions:

• "Always connect the Paraboard to the charger before plugging batteries into the Paraboard. If batteries are connected to the Paraboard while the banana plug leads are not plugged into your charger, there will be a serious risk of a short circuit and possible fire"

• "Always connect the battery's discharge leads before the balance leads. The balance plug's wires were not designed to handle large current flow and should never be inserted into the Paraboard first. The battery and Paraboard can also be damaged by large current flow between the batteries through the balance plug."

• "All batteries plugged into the Paraboard must have the same cell count (2s, 3s, 4s, etc)."

• "All batteries plugged into the Parabaord must have voltages within .1V/cell of each other (3s batteries must be within .3v of each other)." Check the voltage with a battery beak or DMM!

• Do not leave charging batteries unattended.

Step-by-step directions

1. Verify all the batteries you would like to charge on the Paraboard have the same number of cells (ex. all 3s batteries).

2. Verify all the batteries have voltages within .1v/cell of each other (3s batteries must be within .3v of each other). Use a battery beak or DMM to check this.

Only continue if you can pass steps 1 and 2

3. Make sure the charger is powered off.

4. Plug the banana plugs from the Paraboard into the charger ports (Red to red, black to black).

5. Plug the 6 wire balance charging cable into the Paraboard, then into the charger.

6. Power on the charger.

7. Plug a battery discharge cable into an XT90 connector on the Paraboard. Plug the battery's balance charging cable into the proper sized port on either side of the XT90 connector. Repeat for all batteries.

8. These are the options we want for charging our 3s LiPos:

We recommend charging no faster than 2amps/battery. In this case, we are charging 2 batteries, so 4amps is appropriate. You can safely charge the 3s batteries faster than this, but 2amps/battery works fine.

9. On the charger, press the "Start" button edit the charging options. Use the "Inc." and "Dec." buttons to change the selected option. Press "Start" again to select the option, then use the "Inc." and "Dec." buttons to change its value. When you are finished changing the option, press the "Start" button until no options are selected.

10. Once all options are correctly selected, press and hold the "Start" button until you hear a beep. Wait for the charger to do a quick battery check, the press "Start" again. The batteries are now charging. You can press the "Stop" button at any time to stop charging the batteries.