battery question with 14.8

jhardway

Member
I do have a few battery questions. When I got done with my first 14.8v flight I found the battery warmer then my 11.1, along with my ESC's. One of my ESC's were even a little warmer then the others, nothing I could not leave a finger, it was still warm, just a little warmer. I know I am using higher voltage range and everything probably runs warmer. I am wondering what are signs when are you running things to hot.

Any input is very welcomed.

Jack
 

matwelli

Member
when you run 14.8 volts you must ensure you run a seperate bec, and not use the one that's built into the esc - it is really only designed to work on 7.4 volts, so has to disipate alot of heat at 14.8 volts. Use a bec please, or a fireball may result :)
 

jhardway

Member
Thanks Mat - so even if I am using Maytach 30A ESC with the WKM. On the WKM when it was installed they had me pull all the middle pins so that the power for the flight controller comes from the pmu. Now my question is even if the ESC is rated for a 4s battery you would be on a separate BEC.

cheers
 

kloner

Aerial DP
the general rule with lipos is theres two ways to get them hot under use. draw too high of amperage or over discharging them. if warm is like 90f , your fine, just don't fly em much longer per flight if it's a overdischarge thing, if it's an over amperage draw and the batteries are rated to do it, i'd question the internal resistance of the pack which gets killed from either of the two above as well as storing them charged for more than say 2 weeks at a time depending ont he brand and age of said pack.

They don't live forever and the harder you are on the packs, the less time you'll spend flying them

One way to tell if your over discharging them is by how much maf the pack takes back in during charging, if it's a 2200mah pack and you see it taking in excess of 2000 mah per charging, your overdischarging it. you rlooking to leave 20% mah in the pack when your done. it only really works on a newer pack though cause if you damage a cell, you start holding less mah. so a battery you used to get 5 minutes flight on now really only gives 4:30 and decreasing rapidly with each over discharge. When you start to kill one, you want to get it out of rotation
 
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matwelli

Member
@jhardway - it depends on the esc.

Inside the esc is the battery Eliminator circuit or BEC
Basic BEC circuits simply burn off the excess voltage as heat, and those ones you should not use to power up anything if running on 4s as the heat they can generate is enough to shut the esc down, or in one case I have seen, set the esc on fire

Advanced BEC circuits ate bormaly called SBEC or UBEC, and some of the larger esc's have then, an example is the the turnigy plush 80 amp esc, these ones are fine to use on 4s as they incorperate a switch-mode voltage converter that do sent simply convert the excess voltsge to heat, but chops up the voltage using pulse width modulation so don't generate significant heat
 

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