Boeing

My Feedback: (145)

I am a new guy in the area of electric flight. I have read that it is a good idea to draw down a battery to 70% to 80% of it labeled capacity - mAh. Am I on the right track to maintain a battery in good condition? Is there a charger/measurement tool available to measure the current level of a battery?

Thanks for the information.

BarracudaHockey

My Feedback: (11)

Consume no more than 80 percent of capacity to keep your pack happy.

Also discharge rate is important, make sure you have a properly C rated battery for the amps you're system will pull

spog1

All you need to measure is a voltmeter. Measure the battery after sitting at least 5 min after discharging. 80% discharged is about 3.7 volts/cell.

siberianhusky

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...itor_2_6S.html

One of these is cheap enough and accurate enough for a quick voltage check. Not as accurate as a meter.
Tested mine against my meter and it's 0.05v low at full charge. Could change with voltage but I figure it's close enough.
Just plugs into the balance port, gives total and individual cell voltages.
Available all over the place, just knew where they are in the HK catalog.

aeajr

My Feedback: (2)

Depending on how you mean this it could be a old rule left from the old NiCd days. Those batteries had a memory effect. If you did not discharge them all the way they would develop a memory and over time would hold less and less charge. So it was common to run them down before charging them.

If you are talking Lipo batteries then running them down more than 80% will likely damage them. Actually best practice says you never get them below 3V per cell, resting voltage. If they get below 2.5 they start to take damage and the difference in charge level between 2.5 and 3 ain't much.

To measure the load your motor is putting on your battery you use a wattmeter. This is the one Iuse:
http://www.amazon.com/Watts-Meter-An...words=watts+up

If you want to measure the charge level of a battery you use a battery checker:
http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXCBUV&P=7


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