Battery Charger & Power Supply Solutions

I need to upgrade my battery charger and power supply station to something more powerful. Until now I've been using four chargers consisting of three different models, two of which are connected to a 10 Amp power supply. The other two have built-in power supplies.

My current setup struggles with the 3S 6400 mAh batteries and about halfway through the charge until the end the power supply's fan kicks in and is quite noisy and annoying.

It would be nice to be able to charge multiple batteries of different voltages and mAh if possible, or at least multiple batteries of the same voltage and mAh rating.

Above all I'd like to cut down the time needed to charge my batteries.

Any suggestions? What are you guys using? Are you happy with your charging station?

I have been using a Thunder T6 multi, it is one of those copy jobs where the same charger is under 10 names. The power supply I was happiest with was actually a sealed lead acid battery with a small motorcycle battery charger always hooked to it. To charge 4 batteries at 4 amps requires a lot more than a 16 amp power supply, otherwise they get really hot. And those are not cheap.

Oh, and that charger will do any combination of amps and chemistry at once.

Is that like the Hitec X4 charger?
http://www.amain.com/hitec-x4-ac-plus-four-channel-ac-dc-multi-charger-6s-6a-50w-x-4/p214203

Have you heard of Revolectrix? They make a series called Cellpro. Here are a couple videos:

http://www.hobbypartz.com/75p-t6-multi-charger.html

Hobbypartz has the T6

Revolectrix is who makes the Co Pilot II helicopter thing I use, never looked at thier other stuff.

This looks like a pretty cool setup:

Unboxing: SkyRC RS16 180w Charger & eFuel 17A Power Supply


The RC Pit-Stop EP18 - SkyRC RS16 Charger Features and Functions

I have the HobbyKing version of the HobbyPartz clone that Tyson posted. Certainly the best charger I've ever seen or owned. There isn't anything on it I wish was different. It's four completely independent chargers and the price is sure right. I power mine from a Astron 30A switching supply.

...Tiger

The HobbyKing version I have is called the "Quattro" and it's $99 in the US warehouse

...Tiger

I'm kind of leaning towards the Cellpro Powerlab 8 since I might be needing more than 6S for my heavy lift model. It looks like it needs a 24 volt power supply to do that though.

It would need to be whatever the charged voltage is, a 3S is 12.6 volts, so I power up the charger at 13.8 so there is enough. a 12V power supply would not do it.

I was always wondering how you charge a 6S battery with a 12 volt power supply. I'm looking at a few 24 volt power supplies.

I don't know the specifics of the chargers you guys are talking about but... Some better chargers actually have a switching power supply inside so they can charge batteries at a higher voltage than the input supply voltage. This is not uncommon so be sure to look at the specs for the one you are considering carefully. You may not need a high voltage supply.

...Tiger

@Tiger - This is the charger I was referring to:
http://www.helidirect.com/electroni...1344w-multichemistry-battery-workstation.html
There are some specs on that page. I ordered one yesterday.

Looks like that one is good at lower voltages, my T6 will throw an input voltage error sometimes.

I'm hoping this will be the last charger I have to buy for a while and eliminate some clutter of my current charging workstation.

I also ordered their MPA.



There are info and specs about it here:
http://www.helidirect.com/mpa-multi-port-safe-parallel-adapter-for-xh-compatible-battery-packs.html

Wow! Now this is an accident waiting to happen! It's only February, but for now this gets my "Worst Idea Ever" award for 2015. This is just not cool at all. Yes it has PTC fuses to (hopefully) prevent a fire, but that's not much comfort. If you want to charge multiple batteries, you need to get something like Tyson and I have. This is an engineering train wreck!

Do you get the idea I don't really like this thing? You can't just parallel charge LiPo's, even if they are the same type unless you use a charge current no greater than the rating of the smallest single LiPo. I hope there is something about this I don't understand, but I really don't think so.

...Tiger

OMG!!! I haven't watched the first video, but I just watched the second one. What a moron! He says he just leaves the charger set at 16A all the time, because the charger "knows" how big the battery is. Never mind that's IMPOSSIBLE! In the video, he "only" gets up to about 14amps. That's because the battery wasn't discharged more. 16amps is OVER 7C on his 2200mah battery! He's going to have a FIRE very very soon! It scares me to think people are watching this and thinking he is even a little bit credible. I don't know if I want to watch the first one. This is totally nuts!

...Tiger

@Tiger - It does appear that the batteries are in parallel but the charger seems to be able to read each cell of each pack through the MPA board. Watch this video and see what you think:

These guys talk about the charger's features a little more:

Here is a link to the manual.

Powerlab 8 Charger:
http://revolectrix.com/support_docs/item_1437.pdf

MPA Product page:
http://www.revolectrix.com/MPA_XH.htm

Here is a tour of the PC software:
http://www.revolectrix.com/CCS_Tour.htm