Being restriced to only charging one battery at a time drastically decreases the amount of time you can spend flying.
You can charge multiple batteries at once with one charger by using a parallel charging board, but I don't think they are practical because all of your batteries cells have to have the same voltage within a certain region (0.1v).
It would be quite handy if we could just connect all of the individual cells of the batteries is series and just balance charge them as one big battery. And we can!
In this article I will tell you step by step how you can create your own series charging board.
Although it's quite safe when doing everything right, I'm not responsible for any possible damage/harm done by this project....
With that out of the way, let's get started!
Step 1: Gather all the parts
- male balance connectors to plug your batteries into (I used 3 2s connectors)
- 1 female balance connector to plug into your charger (I used a 6s connector (3 times a 2s battery = 6s) )
- a piece of perfboard (100x30mm)
- 1 female JST connector to plug into your charger
- 3 male JST connectors to plug your batteries into
Step 2: connect everything together
I would suggest to use normal guage wire for the connections around the balance area and thicker wires for connecting the JST connectors together as the current flowing through these will be considerably higher.
I didn't have a 6s balance connector at hand so because I'm cheap (not frugal :-D) I just used a 7 pin header, soldered a piece of ribbon cable to it and covered the exposed connections with hot glue.
I don't recommend doing this because it's very easy to accidentally put it in the charger the wrong way around and destroy your charger.
Step 3: protect the bottom
If you have the opportunity to acces a 3d printer and have followed my design you can download and print a plate to sit underneath and hold the perf-board. bottom plate
If you would put down the board on an electrically conductive surface it would short out the batteries and bad things will happen.
You don't have to 3d print one though, a plastic plate glued to the bottom will work just as well.
Step 4: test it
Now everything is done and you can test your creation, I tested mine outside just to keep the house from burning down if something went wrong.
Set your charger to charge at 1c and start charging. During the first test I would recommend you to keep an eye on the cell voltages.
Thanks for reading!
This is my first article so If you have any suggestions or tips don't hesitate to let me know.
Please excuse any grammar mistakes as English isn't my native language and I'm 15 years old.
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