Full run down test Cahaya 2500mah lipo

Posted on 14th December 2015 by graz27

Time for a test to see how long I can get out of this new lipo, wind was calm 1-3 mph. I rain the AR Drone with the weight of the Parrot GPS Flight recoder and the Mirumod installed.

In total 533grams.

Fully charged lipo and landed when it read 35% left on the Freeflight app.

I got 17 mins which is the longest flight battery tested thus far, even though it doees make the ar drone a bit sluggish and slow to respond to any wind blowing it about.

If course this was just a boring hover flight and I would expect less flying it about and I still think while the lipo is new , a time of around 15mins without running battery down too low will be a good result.

I could have got longer than 17mins if I had ran lipo down lower, but I dont think its worth it as anything less than 35% left is going kill the battery real quick.

Anyway, the lipo used just over 1500mah in that 17mins flight

Without weight of the Parrot gps flight recoder and Mirumod and just a stock AR Drone, I think a easy 20 mins flight is there with this lipo.

I personally think you gain so much better control , especially in the wind with the Mirumod that its a no brainer to fit one and if you not upto soldering then you can buy the board all ready made.

 

As I have already mentioned this is the longest running lipo I have tested in the AR Drone 2.0 and bear in mind if you try and fit the Parrot GPS Recorder aswell, you are going to have to cut away the foam inside the shell and also velco wont really be long enough and either mod it or make sure shell cant come off in flight.

I only had the Parrot GPS unit installed to test flight times as I believe anything inder 8/10 metres the gps does nothing to stabilize the craft, as at under 8/10 metres it only uses the sonar and the bottom camera for position hold, GPS only helps stabilize high up and if course if you want to use waypoints.

Video of the battery running down to 35%.

Shall be testing a very different battery next if all goes well………..

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Cahaya 2500 mah 20c Lipo

Posted on 12th December 2015 by graz27

Done 2 tests now with the Cahaya 2500 mah 20c Lipo and the first test in the AR Drone was just a break in test that I always try and do with a new Lipo.

At a weight of 513 grams + a small lipo alarm added it was a lot of weight to lift.

The first take off it just about got off the ground and then I remembered that the AR Drone FreeFlight app has a setting to change to HD battery, I think what that may do is to slightly change the internal pid settings etc to better cope with a heavier battery.

Anyway, flew for what was about 10:30 secs in total down to 60% left for a first flight, the drone was indeed very sluggish and had problems with the wind, it was about 5 mph and because of testing in a back yard , also the wind was swirling about a lot.

I did do a video of it but done with very low resolution camera glasses as my HD pair have failed.

So excuse the poor video and sound on this… But gives a basic idea of how flight went.


I think it would have handled a lot better without the heavy weight of the Parrot flight recorder and at these low heights the flight recorder does nothing to help stabilize the flight, and only records video and gps track but I had it installed just to see what it was like at max weight.

Now waiting for a no wind day to do a full test down to 35% left and see how long we get.

I am thinking it will be about 15 mins max with this kind of weight……..

Also another note is that to get this lipo and the flight recorder to fit under the outdoor shell one has to cut away a lot of the foam inside and its still a tight fit and the velco strap inside hardly grips at all. Need to take that out and fit a better one.

I did do another flight but indoors and that was 12:30 seconds down to 40% at which time teh ar drone decided as it does a lot to flip over and fall on its back, luckly this was at low heigh and on carpet.

Next test will be outside when wind dies down….

I have since got another Cahaya 2500 mah lipo and that also read new at a perfect balance at 3.85 oer cell, so these lipo’s come very well balanced and are available for a great price.

 

 

 

 

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AR DRONE 2500mAH 11.1V 20C Li-Po

Posted on 10th December 2015 by graz27

Just received a Cahaya 2500mah 20c lipo to see how we go with one of these.

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At least with this battery, it read totally evenly balanced unlike the ZOP Power one I tried from elsewhere last time.

So this Lipo is looking promising, and shall as I always do, give it a nice gentle 100mah over night charge and then test it.

Weight wise this Lipo came in at around 155 grams.

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I read that some are saying they are getting around 22mins flight time, but as I have the Miru RC Mod and Parrot GPS Flight recorder, I am not expecting that long without taking the Lipo too low in voltage.

For interest with this Lipo installed the all up weight of my AR Drone is now 513 grams.

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Stock AR DRONE 2.0 is about 380 grams with outdoor hull.

Will post a link where you can buy this from if it performs okay.

For sure at 513 grams, prob getting very close to being too heavy (Especially in wind) as it will prob drop like a brick and wont have enough power to fight wind.

But hey we shall see 😉

Note: This is for anyone who is new to the AR Drone 2.0 and this battery needs a different charger , and you can not charge this lipo with the standard charger as this Lipo is like most others and it has a balance plug lead.

For Compassion :-

My old GiFI 2000 mah lipo and that was thus far the heaviest Lipo I used.

Was getting around 15 mins on that, landing at 30% left.

IMG_0978

 

 

 

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ZOP Power Lipo

Posted on 2nd December 2015 by graz27

As my old AR Drone 2.0  lipos I was using are getting pretty work old and I am getting only around 7 mins each from them, I decided to look around for some new ones.

So I see a ZOP Power one at a good price from China and ordered one to try out.

Plugged the Lipo into to see how well balanced it was.

As you can see below the lipo was not very well balanced, and cell 2 looked the worst.

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Anyway, I balance charged it upto full charge at a slow gentle 100mah , and it took around 630mah.

End full charge readings were :-

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Not as even as I like, but thought looks like it should be okay.

So changed the deans connector over for a tamiya connector so it would fit the AR Drone and off for a indoor test flight to see what difference to flight time a new lipo would make.

Was going okay I noticed I got down to 42% left remaining in freeflight app and then it went 42% and then straight down to 32%.

The length of the flight was 12 mins 30 secs until I landed at 32%.

I quickly hit land and read the lipo as heres what it showed.

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As you can see that cell 2 is reading 2.84!! And in fact it was actually 2.78 when I first read it straight after the flight, it recovered a bit 5 mins later to the above.

So that Cell 2 that looked iffy to me when I first unboxed the battery was indeed not very good at all.

And being its resting at 2.84, it must have been down at around maybe 2 volts when I landed.

So this lipo is duff, and I wont be buying any more ZOP Power Lipos.

Although I consider this lipo wrecked now , I thought I would connect it to charge and charge to storage and see what it came upto.

Not worth trying to send it back as that would cost more than buying another.

This was the result :-

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Hmmmm seemed to charge to storage voltage okay…

So balance charged again at a gentle 100mah over night to full charge which I see the following:-

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Similar to the first charge results I had.

Oh well lets try another flight and I thought this time I would land at 50% left.

So I ran it until I hit 50% and landed which then was about 49%.

And took more readings:-

IMG_0945

As you can see Cell 2 is low again, not below 3 volts this time but under load I think it may have hit 3 volts or lower.

This will be okay as a test lipo until it puffs, which it will surely do and I will have to make sure I land at 60% left.

As many will know, you can get good and bad lipo’s from new and as always the clue is how well balanced are they.

Normally when I get new ones they read around 3.84 volts and maybe within .01 of each other. This one was way off and Cell 2 definately well off where it should be and no way can I get the expected flight time from this 1500mah lipo, as cell 2 is no good.

This could just have been unlucky me and I got a duff one, but I think maybe they should at least test the voltage of the cells before they send them out, and being as they cant have been checked thats the reason I will now steer clear of any more ZOP Power lipos.

I will carefully run and change this lipo a few times to see how much worse it gets or how long before the cells puff.

Now I am charging from my last flight to see just how many mah goes back in to full from the 3.72 , 3.40, 3.70 voltages..

Update :-

Charging up this lipo it took 1277mah back into it from the above voltages and ended up with 4.16 , 4.18, 4.17.

I think if Cell 2 had not been weak like it is, then I would have got about 15mins flight time from it which was what I used to get with another makes , flying with outside shell, parrot gps and Mirumod installed.

Just for comparison below are weights of the ZOP power and the GiFi 1500mah lipo.

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On another update to this quite long post now, but anyway a 3rd flight on this ZOP Power Lipo and I ran the AR Drone until it read 60% left and then landed.

With again as the setup below, I got a about 10 mins 15 seconds and then I hit 60% left.

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Then again hooked it up and resting voltage was as follows:-

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So to end this quite long post now, it seems even though this lipo is pretty much trash, I can for the time being get about 10 mins out of it until cell 2 gives up or starts to puff.

Tempted to get some more of the GiFi lipos as they seemed to work quite well and the 2000mah version gave me about almost 20 mins when it was new…

I do have some info I kept on these others when they were new, I just need to find it and add it, just case the info is helpful to others.

Have fun!

 

 

 

 

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AR DRONE 2.0 testing

Posted on 22nd November 2015 by graz27

Well after repairing the main board and replacing all the motor bearings and on my first test it seemed to fly okay but seemed to have problems holding height and would jump in and down all of a sudden.

I knew I had a new navigation board and sonar that I bought a long time back and so fitted that and then it seem to work fine.

Well that was until after a few test flights , as I fitted the battery for another test there was a flash of fire as one of the fet’s in one of the motor’s esc board  decided it was time to self terminate.

Lucky enough I had a spare esc board that was in my old original ar drone so I grabbed that and re-soldered motor to it and will repair this fried esc pcb at a later date.

So after a lot of time and also lucky enough to have some spares laying around was able to get this ar drone working again.

But if I had to have buy news parts then this would never had been worth it.

So bear this in mind if you see a cheap faulty ar drone for sale, as chances are it will cost more to fix than buying a working second hand one or even a new one.

Right, as now this was working I fitted back the AR.Drone v1.0 and v2.0 WiFi-less mod by Miru

For now I just fitted MiruLLC (Logic Level Converter) as I had a spare one from what I ordered from him before and wired it up temp to the Arduino that I used before.

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Reason I done this was way back when the last time I flew this mod with the ar drone it flipped over in the wind and fell and broke the central cross and also the mod which at that time I had fitted inside the drone rammed into the main board and killed the data line and I was unable to use the mod on that board as one of the data lines had a internal short.

Not a fault of the mod, but just bad luck the way it crashed.

But I do intend to make a smaller Arduino and rx combo and fit it back inside, but waiting to make sure this ar drone works ok for a while first.

So done a few test flights on back yard and seems to be working fine (touch wood)

Had to be careful as flying over grass can really confuse the sonar and bottom camera position hold, and with wind aswell, makes this very touchy and it wants to flip over really.

So I found using the Miru mod and switch the bottom camera off by the rc switch helped but of course it drifts off as the Parrot GPS recorder I have fitted does not come into play til I believe its over 10 metres in height. (Wish there was a way to enable this at lower with bottom camera position hold off)

Wanting to do some more testing before I take it up high enough for gps to kick in , but its just too windy at present and trust me this ar drone needs pretty much no wind conditions, more so when testing in back garden or yard etc as the turbulence you get from being inside a fenced area will throw it around a lot.

Outside at a field as wind mostly blowing from one direction it handles it much better.

Anyway, its been fun to use this again and although by todays standards the camera is poor quality and in wind its not as stable as say dji or walkera quads, its still kinda fun….

 

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Happy flying 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

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