LIPO voltages

[Stephen Pruitt]

Hi all. . .

Quick question.

We have our Scarlet Dragon on a Ronin-M (it works just great by the way!), and we are powering the camera from a 16.9V Lipo. That works fine, too.

My question is this: Apparently, the Lipos can keep dropping voltages all the way down to 6V. Does the Scarlet have an "auto NON-self-destruct" switch that will shut it off if the voltage gets too low to operate safely? Or is that something we need to watch manually ourselves?

Thanks!

Stephen

 

[Chris McKechnie]

You never really want to run your lipo down past 20% remaining...which is approximately down to 14.4 V or so. If you continue running it down way past the 20%, you could experience puffing with the battery, which is NOT GOOD. Lipos are very volatile, so handle them with care. You may also want to have lipo fire safe bags for charging/transport too.

The camera will not operate at 6v...believe the minimum is 12.5V (don't remember if that's correct).

As an FYI: Lipo degradation is pretty bad with heavy draw systems/cameras.

 

[Stephen Pruitt]

Is there an alternative recommendation besides LIPOs???

Thanks.

Stephen

 

[Dragan Trifunovic]

Or is that something we need to watch manually ourselves?

Just use some lipo voltage checker with buzzer where you can set at which voltage (per cell) it will start giving sound warning.

 

[Björn Benckert]

camera shut down when power goes to low so no worries. And also you see the Voltage on the display so when it starts to move down towards 12v you should swap battery. We used lipo batteries quite a bit no problem.

 

[Stephen Pruitt]

Great! Thanks guys.

I've seen some really scary footage of lipo fires. How common is this problem?

Stephen

 

[Jacek Zakowicz]

All current lipo batteries have circuitry to cut off the power when the voltage gets to the certain low but still safe level. That same circuitry also limits current per cell as current is the main heat generator that led to (lipo) fires in the past. I'm pretty sure you are safe there. It would be pretty much a suicide for a battery manufacturer not to put this circuitry into the batteries....

 

[Dragan Trifunovic]

I'm flying my "drones" very extensively for 6 years, charged various lipo's (cheap and expensive) many thousand times and I had ONLY one incident with small lipo battery.
That was my error. I was trying to peel of protective external foil and accidentally punctured one cell.
Not a single problem using and charging lipos for all this time. If you treat them good there should be no problems.

@Jacek - only lipo batteries with circuitry to cut off the power as I know is for newer DJI Phantom and Ronin gimbal.
Standard lipo's we use for drones doesn't have any electronics in them.

 

[Joel Voelker]

All current lipo batteries have circuitry to cut off the power when the voltage gets to the certain low but still safe level. That same circuitry also limits current per cell as current is the main heat generator that led to (lipo) fires in the past. I'm pretty sure you are safe there. It would be pretty much a suicide for a battery manufacturer not to put this circuitry into the batteries....

not all have safeties, Freefly batteries have zero protection