Throttle-Tech - New product from Tech-Aero Designs LLC
 

I have been running this device for over a year. It has run flawlessly. I had my doubts as to whether it would make a difference initially. I have it in all 3 of my pattern planes -Soon to be 4(Biside)). I also think it may reduce battery consumption, as well. I experience typical Masters flight battery consumption in the 2500 to 3000ma range with the Pletty Advance and YGE ESC.

Super cool, going to have to try one!

Is this device also compensating on the difference between a new battery and an old one, meaning that you the same power if you fly a new battery or an old one?

Best regards,

Isaac Najary

Isaac, it is configurable, so within reason it is possible to set it up to give a common feel across a collection of older and newer battery packs.

Hi Ed,

I've been waiting for the release after talking with Joe L. at a contest and Arch earlier in the year. I already use you're dual regulator system in my pattern planes and a new one on the way. I will certainly give it a try...

Bill H.
D-2-
FAI/F3A

Hi Joe,
How are you finding it to use and how is it's performance in practical terms etc - perhaps you could elaborate some.

Brian

Brian,

You have a fairly consistant motor performance at a specific stick position pretty much throughout a flight. Typically, when your batteries are fresh at full charge you don't need as much stick throw and the response to stick input is more jumpy. I feel I have pretty much the same response throughout a flight now and no jumpiness in acceleration in the beginning of the flight. It can vary from battery pack to battery pack some depending on battery age and condition. Like Ed said above you could adjust the programming of the device for old batteries versus newer fresh batteries if you wanted to take the time. I don't do that. I just take into account the age of the battery pack and fly knowing I will need more throttle with the older batteries. Also, there are some flashing lights on the circuit board which are useful from the standpoint that they can prevent you from flying a discharged battery accidently. Ed and Dave Lockhart spent a lot of time trying to determine the optimal operational conditions. I'm sure Dave will chime on this at some time. Not sure I explained it 100% accurate, but I'm sure Ed will correct me on anything misleading.

I know that Dale Arnold has been very happy with this in his Contra setup, as he said with the contra it is very easy to use more throttle than needed as the plane doesn't speed up a great deal with the throttle stick. He said his battery consumption has gone down noticeably and that it was much easier to fly through a sequence with it feeling the same the entire flight,

Arch

Hi Joe / Arch,
Thanks.
' I think I've found what I'm looking for '

Brian

Sweet! I certainly 'waste' a lot of juice early in my flights. I can see how this would help. Tech Aero is the Bee's Knees.

Obviously this is a more complex system than a simple voltage regulator. What are some of the benefits of using this thing over a voltage regulator set at something like 36V?

Joe, a voltage regulator would be very large, heavy and expensive, not to mention that it would eat up more power from the battery pack. Not at all practical for our application. Throttle-Tech does not regulate the LiPo pack voltage, it monitors it and compensates the throttle signal to the ESC as the battery discharges and drops in voltage. It's as if you, as the pilot had perfect knowledge at all times of what the LiPo state of discharge was, and were able to continuously compensate for it with small and subtle changes of the throttle stick to get the same response from the motor throughout the flight for whatever throttle setting you intended. Throttle-Tech reduces the pilot workload by assuring that full throttle is the same from start to end, just as 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 throttle and every point in between is the same response for the entire flight. It is a smoothly integrated response, giving the same feel and response for the entire flight throughout the full range of the throttle.

Thanks Ed, sounds nice. I was thinking about the regulator, basically it's a box turning wasted energy to heat with no compensation for how the voltage drops under load. Certainly not a practical approach.

I like how your device not only compensates for the steady-state condition of the battery (voltage) but also the transient response (which I guess is a function of the ir of the pack).

And it's pretty small :)

Joe, it's small and light too, just 0.5 oz complete. Voltage transients are also compensated for as you surmised.

I'm not quite sure from your shipping information----does the $5 charge apply to international orders too--in this case to the UK?

For the near term, yes, $5 covers even international shipping, but that is 1st class with no additional services. For faster international delivery and/or services for registered mail, that is extra and has to be requested when placing the order, and will be separately invoiced.

Hi Ed,

What is the device consumption when the motor battery is connected and receiver battery is disconnected?

I usually connect the motor battery and wait for my turn to fly.

Best regards,

Isaac Najary

Isaac, it will draw approximately 1 mA from the motor battery

Isaac, there are LEDs on the Throttle-Tech controller for status information. The orange LED is a voltage alarm status. Briefly, it is able to toggle between monitoring the receiver bus voltage and the motor battery voltage. When there is no motor battery connected, the displayed status reflects the voltage at the receiver bus to power them. When the motor battery is then detected, normally after the receiver has been powered up, there is a brief, cadenced flashing sequence to indicate it is flipping from displaying the receiver voltage status to the motor battery status. If you start out with the motor battery connected, you will miss the opportunity to see if a low voltage alarm situation may exist for the receiver. For a more complete description of how this works, you can read about it in the Throttle-Tech Users Guide, available at www.tech-aero.net.

Hi Ed,

Can you be more accurate, what is the device consumption per hour?

Best regards,

Isaac Nasjary

1 mAh

Thank you.

What does the sporting code say to devices like this ......helping the pilot , getting "input" from the plane /equipment and makes adjustement to what the pilot acctually tells the plane to do.....
Sounds to me that this is working a bit in the "grey aerea" off whta should be legal

Rune,

I think that this unit is ok in that sense. If my understanding is correct, you program a predefined set of parameters based on the voltage of the pack and this unit reacts the same way every time. Its not like what Hacker were doing with their Centrol unit where the controller took it upon itself to adjust the output based on RPM and give a fixed RPM per stick position. This unit is only taking a predefined action based on a voltage setting while not being aware of the result. It still requires the pilot to manage the throttle and speed of the model

Hope that all makes sense.
Niall

Hey Ed, on Figure 4 of the instruction manual you have 2 deans connectors coming from the ESC. of course one is for the battery what would the other deans connector be for? Is this situation on figure 4 if you are running to 5s battery pack instead of a 10s brick pack?

Hi Rune,
This is not at all like that Senstrol (or whatever it was called).

This effectively limits the max power , within the volt limit that exists.
My understanding is that this removes most of the perceived fall off in the power system as the battery discharges.
If it was in the ESC's there would be no question about it.

It should simply be viewed as being part of the motor control circuitry - electric motors require control circuits. As do CDI's. CDI's have automatic advance and retard functions built in so as to 'help' them control the engine they are on/controlling/managing.

Brian

Sporting Code 5.1.2 states:
Automatic control sequencing (pre-programming) or automatic control timing devices are prohibited.


I would point out that every Jeti ESC with manual brake settings uses pre-programmed timing to automatically change from an initial to a final level of braking over an adjustable time. This is completely against the rules but has been quite rightly overlooked as its only purpose is to limit the inertial loads imparted to the airframe and doesn't provide any advantage to the pilot.

Sporting Code also states:

Permitted: Manually operated switches or programmable options to couple and mix control functions.

In my opinion the Throttle-Tech is simply a device which couples and mixes throttle position and battery voltage. More importantly it is an open loop control system whose parameters are set before the flight comences and is thus totally legal.

Malcolm

it was just a thoght, its silly if a pilot is standing in any competition and got disqualified because off it! and the Jeti brake and also the Castel(I think) ..I had not think about that!!

Deleted

Hello All,
Nearly a decade back, Dave Lockhart and I practically begged one ESC manufacturer to create just such a function.
Now because Ed was willing to build it, it exists.
Regards,
Dean Pappas.

Hi Robert, that picture is showing a series connection for two 5s packs into one 10s pack to the esc.

David Snow

Thanks Dave, that's what I thought; makes sense now. If it will help limit my mah usage in flight without loss of power. I will gladly give it a go.

I've had it for most of the year and it works very good, not sure it really reduces mah usage but it does make the various packs feel the same and the throttle has a constant feel throughout the flight except maybe the last few maneuvers on the older worn out packs.

Dave Snow

Hi Dave,
If you innately have excellent throttle management, then there will be no reduction in battery consumption.
It's the folks who inadvertently burn a little excess power, early in the flight, who will benefit the most.
Sport flyers should love this thing!

Oh yes, and Malcolm's assessment of the function and legality of the device is spot-on.

Dean P.

Rune:

Functionally, this isn't any different than the pressure regulator on a YS. All the internal mechanisms are different, but the end result is like running a well tuned YS in that the motor does what you ask it to throughout the flight. It's an open loop system. There isn't any feedback to it about the actual performance of the model or even the motor. It can sense one thing, which is the voltage of the motor's LiPo. And when you think about it, that's what a pressure regulator does in essence. Substitute fuel pressure for electrical pressure, AKA voltage. An oversimplification? Yes, but functionally, no real difference.

Both of the Deans connectors in that illustration are for connecting to the battery pack, which is comprised of 2 5S packs as is typical. One goes to one 5S pack, the 0V or negative side, and the other to the other 5S pack for the positive side. They get combined in in a harness to the ESC that simply connects the two 5S packs together with one of its wires. Bottom line, the LiPo Tap has the brown or black wire soldered to the black, 0V or negative wire from your ESC, and the red wire from the LiPo tap goes to the red wire on the ESC.

Hi All,

I had every intention of jumping in sooner, but have been busy getting an F3P Team Trials setup for the US. With temperatures around 30F / 0 Celsius, snow and ice, and nasty wind, I am not in the F3A mindset :rolleyes:

I started flying electrics in 2003, and electric F3A in 2006. The biggest fallacy of electric is that the power is the same every time. It is not. It is very dependent on the ambient temperature and how/when the motor battery was charged. With very careful control of the temperature of the battery during charging and resting and timing between charging and flying, the difference in power can be mitigated to an extent. And by adjusting the amount of cooling air to the battery, the effects of ambient temperature can be mitigated to an extent. And by keeping an equal number of flights on all batteries, the difference between batteries can be minimized. Still, there had to be a better way. Ed felt the initial concept was simple enough, but it was about 1 year of developing hardware and software before the first prototype was flown.

The default settings in Throttle Tech are based on my calculations (with some tweaks by Dean Pappas) from several hundred flight logs (actually probably closer to 1,000) over about 3 years. The majority of motor/prop/battery/plane setups (including Brenners Contra Drive) will substantially benefit from the default settings. Throttle Tech will work equally well on inrunners, outrunners, geared, direct drive, single prop, Contra prop, and Ed can supply Throttle Tech for a wide range of voltages. The proof is quite simple....with ESC logging or Eagletree logging onboard, complete a full power vertical upline before flying a sequence, and then another full power upline at the end of the sequence. Observe the substantial difference in watts and RPM. Add the Throttle Tech, and repeat......the differences (if any) will be greatly reduced. If you are routinely flying in temps less than 60F / 15C, or greater than 95F / 35C, or discharging further than 70%, you may want to adjust the default settings.

I was flying the first prototype in early 2012, and used it at the 2012 US NATs. A 3rd generation prototype was in my plane at the 2013 NATs. Between several units in several planes with a variety of motors and ESCs, I have about 1,500 flights without any failures - discounting one instance where I knocked a plug loose - in which case, it is simply like flying without Throttle Tech. If you already have a servo extension lead between the ESC and RX, the weight gain from Throttle Tech is actually a little less than .5 ounces, as it replaces the extension.

Throttle Tech will not turn a bad setup into a good one, but it makes the good ones even better, and makes them very close what electric is supposed to be. For pilots that have very good speed control, and excess power at the end of an average flight, the mah consumption will not change. For the guys that tend to be heavy handed on the throttle, saving as much as 10% is plausible, and in that case, operating temps of the lipo, esc, and motor might even drop a bit.

Seems like a pretty cool idea to me. I'll have to give Ed a call. :)