jongscx

Hokay... so here's the earth...

Wait, wrong train of thought. I bought 2 XPV planes from my local wally-world and 1 storm launcher battery pack.

XPV=$8.00 X 2 = $16
Storm launcher batt/charger= $14.99

Now, I also bought some lipo batteries from an online store. they have a 2-prong JST plug (the kind with the holes, some say it's female more say it's male...) and a additional 3-prong plug. the 3-prong is white, obviously wider than the jst, and has 2 lines of plastic on it to keep me from plugging it in wrong. it's not Deans or anything I've been able to find, but i'm going to replace it with a stereo phono plug anyway, so i dun think it matters much. (if this is a bad idea, someone tell me pls)

Lipo batteries = 14.00 x 2 = $28.00 + shipping

Now, I bought the S/L battery/charger because a) it's self-balancing or something or other and costs about half of the other legit chargers i've seen online, and b) because some idiot is bound to return an S/L because they couldn't read "batteries not included" and it'll be marked down to about as cheap as the XPVs were too. [EDIT: heh heh... nevermind, some idiot already did... $12.00]

Now, the question is, can anyone point me towards some pin-outs or circuit diagrams, or what the hell, give me directions on how to turn the S/L charger to charge my li-po batts. S/L battery is 2-cell, 7.4 (or 7.6) and 740 mAh. my batts are 7.4 (or 7.6... whichever one it was, they were the same as the S/L) and 800 mAh. Now, since the batts are rated a higher mAh, there's no fear of over-current-ing (srry, not too familiar with wording/nomenclature), I just need to know which cable to hook up where.

Also, the XPV charges through a port on the top of the vehicle itself, with the battery inside (bad idea, no?)... can anyone explain that to me?

thanks
Jlopez

[email protected]

mrasmm

basically what I think you are saying is that you want to balance charge your packs through a stereo phono jack? 3.5 or 5.5mm?

The white ends with 3 conductors are also called JST, and are the balancing ends. Of the two outside ends one is positive and one is negative. The center one is a center tap that connects between the middle of the cells for balancing. You just need to make sure that you get the polatiry right on all of them. Also you would need to use the female phono jacks on the battery packs, other wise you could short out your battery and have an explosion.

Also you need to check and make sure that the phono jacks can carry your 740mAh charge rate (atleast I think that is what you said). If you're really set on doing it this way, I would probably go with the 5.5 jack, although that might add too much weight. I know that these jacks are not designed to carry that much current, but they may be able to do it... I am not sure.

Charging in the car is alright I guess, but never charge above 1C, actually a little less would be good too. Allow atleast 15 min for the pack to cool off (I usually wait till the pack gets down to 80F). The only really bad thing about charging in the r/c is that if the pack goes up in flames then so does your car =P. If you treat it right, that's not likely, but it would be the risk you are taking.

Links to pics of some of the stuff you are talking about would be helpful too.

Hopefully I got what you were talking about and that helped a bit

jongscx

ummm... alright...

this is the XPV, basically, it's an S/L clone (no, methinks it came out first, but nobody bought it on account of its exploding lipo batts) It was made my FLYWHEELS and marketted through walmart almost exclusively. Its controls are basically just thrust based, no control surfaces I can see...



and as we know, these are the S/L batts and chargers.


Here's the site where I got the LiPo batts. They were marked down when I got them, so not sure if they're still $14.00.
[link=http://www.grandhobby.com]Grand Hobby[/link]
and here's the battery and the page where I got it...

[link=http://www.grandhobby.com/hiqu3emoli12.html]Lipo battery[/link]

okay... i just noticed that it's a 12C... what does that mean? did i just shoot myself in the foot here?

Anyways, looking inside the S/L charger, there are 2 spikes and a side-clip thing. the spikes are + and - and are labeled on the board... the side-clip thing is what I'm worried/wondering about. That's the middle hole in the 3-hole jst, right? and I'll just have to figure out which the + and - are? (could I stick a paper-clip into it and test it with a multimeter?)

Garrett1234567

mrasmm, let me know if that battery worked. i just got a XPV today and already want more batteries, but dont want to pay the 30 bucks for another battery with charger. Has anyone took the battery case apart to see what battery is in it or how many cells it is?

mrasmm

not sure what s/l means..... but the read lead is the power lead, and the white one is the balance lead.

Can you take any pics or give the specs on the stock battery and charger? I can't find that info anywhere.

12c means that you can discharge the pack at up to 12 times the capacity, or in this case 9.6A, which would be oodles.

How does the weight of the stock pack compare to the one that you have in the pic here? Can you take the voltage of the stock pack?

http://www.xpv.com/

http://www.xpv.com/73635-XPV-front-page.pdf

http://www.xpv.com/73635-XPV-back-page.pdf

http://www.jakkspacific.com/construc...hamps&page=xpv

richrd

OMG what a wreak waiting to happen. After you hop that rocket ship you gotta take a video of the one fight and only . Did you see the recall already man those batts are really going to take some abuse [8D] Please let us know how it turns out.
Rich

jongscx

UPDATE:

Alright, lemme give an update on my progress so far. I have been able to sucessfully power the xpv with the lipo batts that I bought and charge it with my storm launcher (S/L) charger. I'll post that conversion in a separate thread and link it here later.

I don't have any way of checking mah or whatever, so basically, I charged it til the charger stopped, ran it at 30%-50% for 2 charges (cycle batteries and break in the motors) before I started flying.


The XPVs (i got two, different frequencies/colors) suck. Their throttle-control is not a gradient like the S/L, but a multi-state deal, where there are 4 contacts, and depending on which contacts are touching, certain combinations will be made and a percentage of the total power will be sent to the vehicle... normally, this would be fine, but it's the same with the differential steering too, so you can't do the subtle 'holding it just a tad to the right to trim the plane on the fly' that you could with the S/L

Also, PAD the front of your battery compartment. I used some spare foam i had lying around. If... no WHEN you lawndart it into asphalt, your battery will essentially be pounded into the front part. it looks like styro, but that's actually a hard plastic piece there. I broke some of the circuit-board stuff on my lipo before I put the foam in... luckily, it's fine, just a chip on the corner, but any bad impact is still bad.

I also had to change the tip, as they put the same tip on the xpv as are on the batteries. it was an easy fix, just don't rip the antenna cord when you're pulling the esc/rx board out.

Garrett1234567

How did it do, what was your run/charge times with it?

jongscx

Well, charge time is a little more than 2 hours. I haven't timed it, but that sounds about right.

Flight time... about 15 seconds, but that's for actual "flight". I really suck at flying the xpv, do great with a storm launcher, but just haven't gotten over the learning curve yet.
However, my brother and I can bash on a parking lot on them, prolly at 40% throttle on average for about 20-30 minutes, so it's not bad.

Garrett1234567

How did you change the end on the battery, cut the wire on the battery or cut the other end on the plane?

jongscx

I always feel that it's better to change the odd one out than the standard. In this case, the battery may fit another plane so I swapped out the connector on the XPV. I just matched the colors:
red=red
black=black

Dudeski

Can any one point me to the spot on the pc board for the XPV Flywheels whene the antana is soldered on? I have used this setup on 3 different scratch builds now and it never dawned on my to photograph the board! Live and learn. Thanks