Anyone using Multi Battery Parallel Charger Board Plate?

Channel70Productions said:
Just got one and it is merely a piece of thin, fragile, phenolic board with solder mount connections. The concept is great. But, has anyone mounted the board or enclosed it in any way to preclude damage or breakage - or is everyone just very careful? http://www.ebay.com/itm/291135377790?ss ... 1439.l2649

Personally I think that thing is a bad idea which is just going to burn up your charger. I've read reports that often batteries charged with that gizmo are not really fully charged, plus it takes 3 times as long to charge your batteries (assuming you have 3 attached). Better off to spend $39 each on a couple of additional chargers.
 
+1 to Dirty Bird. I too was initially interested in this parallel charging board until I also read about the uneven charging of the batteries (some as low as 80%). I looked for adapters so I could use my 200 watt 4 port charger that I use for my terrestrial RCs but couldn't find any adapters. In the end, I just bought additional chargers. Now I have 3 chargers for 5 batteries. I could fly all day non-stop if I wanted to with this setup.
 
Someone suggested a charging plate could be connected directy to your car battery giving an intelligent battery all the juice it wants and charging in a fraction of the time. Is anyone doing that?
 
I use it all the time with stock charger and it works fine. All battery's charge all the way up then they shut down. How's it going to burn your charger up ? It's just a power supply. It's not going to charge the battery's faster , the charging circut in the charger , it will only allow some many amps for charging.
 
Mori55 said:
I use it all the time with stock charger and it works fine. All battery's charge all the way up then they t down. How's it going to burn your charger up ? It's just a power supply.

Put your hand on the charger when it is charging. Pretty damned hot isn't it? Aside from taking four hours to charge three batteries, it will eventually fail from the heat. Makes more sense, to me at least, to have three chargers. You charge the batteries in 1/3 the time, you stress the chargers much less, and you have two spares on hand should one fail.
 
Dirty Bird said:
Mori55 said:
I use it all the time with stock charger and it works fine. All battery's charge all the way up then they t down. How's it going to burn your charger up ? It's just a power supply.

Put your hand on the charger when it is charging. Pretty damned hot isn't it? Aside from taking four hours to charge three batteries, it will eventually fail from the heat. Makes more sense, to me at least, to have three chargers. You charge the batteries in 1/3 the time, you stress the chargers much less, and you have two spares on hand should one fail.

Bird I understand your theory and I expected that also but my charger doesn't get hot when charging 3 batteries. BTW it takes less than 2 hours to do 3 batteries.
 
How can it take less then 2 hours? the charger keeps 4 amp, its not like when u hook up 3 batterys it gos up to 12 amp.

Myself i have just bought 2 more batterys and a extra charger. I can make manny flight hours a day if i can directly charge the battery after its empty.
 
EMCSQUAR said:
Bird I understand your theory and I expected that also but my charger doesn't get hot when charging 3 batteries. BTW it takes less than 2 hours to do 3 batteries.

From 15-20%, it takes approximately an hour and fifteen minutes to fully charge a single battery. Therefore it would require about 3X that amount of time (approx 4 hours) to charge three batteries from 15-20% with the same charger. The only way you could be charging three batteries in half the time is if the batteries are discharged to only 50-60% capacity, or if the charger isn't charging them completely. I have three chargers, and all three of them get pretty dang hot while charging.
 
I bought my 3 battery charging plate on the (false) assumption it would charge 3 batteries at the same time. Not only did it not do that, it fully charged one battery and then only 75% charged the 2nd battery I had on the plate. I used the main charger to get it to 100%. Think I will chuck the plate out...
 
I thought the same when given this charger. But the P2 batteries which I hammer pretty good - most times well below 20% (my warning on Phantoms are 10.6 & 10.4) and I can dump 3 on it at 15 minute intervals and be back up in under 2 hours and they all start at 12.6 or better. I also have and Apex 4 battery charger and yes that gets hot but I also use the "PB" setting at 4 amps when doing P2 batteries.
 
My charger gets warm but not overly hot. I don't know why your battery's didn't charge all the way up but my parallel charger works fine. And I'm sure there's plenty of people who use this with know problems at all.
 
I have used the triple battery charging plate for over a month now. When used correctly, I've always managed to get three fully charged batteries. The plate is basically a power strip, so there isn't a charge management circuit within it.

The thing I noticed straight away was that when you connect all three batteries on the plate, the batteries are essentially connected in a parallel circuit. Because the batteries can have different charges in them, their output voltages may be different initially.

As a result of this, the batteries may not all charge at once as only the lowest voltage batteries will charge first. Once all batteries are at the same charge level, then they will all charge together to 100% (at least in my experience).

So in summary, I pay attention to charging the most depleted batteries first. Once they are approximately at the same voltage level, I engage all batteries to charge together.

The battery plate is a tool of convenience. Although we're not meant to leave LiPoly batteries charging unattended, I prefer to stick three batteries charging over 4 hours, rather than manage three batteries charging 1.33 hours each.
 
Exactly what happens ! Once they all get I going it's fine. Just have do as you say.
For me it's convenient , I have 4 battery's and 2 chargers and the paralell charger. So everything gets charged at once.
I've used it for a couple of months and my stock charger is fine with it.
 
tch1972 said:

Absolutely - I bought one to see what it was like and it was awful !, so badly made its untrue, just sent mine back and got refund, no way I was putting my batteries on it !!!

:|
 
Well what was the problem ? You just plug the batteries in and the charger.
Like I said mine was fine , it's just a power strip.
 
Mori55 said:
Well what was the problem ? You just plug the batteries in and the charger.
Like I said mine was fine , it's just a power strip.

Best of luck m8 - you want to plug your expensive batteries into something that looks like an infant has made it, thats entirely your choice.

i wont !

;)
 
im with EMCSQUAR on this one.

i ordered 2 of these not from this link but another similar dealer. they are still inbound.

EMCSQUAR is right. i charger is a charger. it has a fixed output. stock is 4 amps.

when you charge only 1 battery with the stock one, it gets "hot" initially then tapers.

if you use one of these parallels, ok, it stays hot longer. but its the same amount of "hot" on the charger unit as charging 3 batteries individually in succession, right?

the parallel does mean that the total process for 3 batteries is longer. who cares? set and forget.

the "reports ive read" about these "ill performing" units could be defective/poorly designed circuit boards that they ordered. because these batteries are smart batteries: they know how much current they need until they taper, and when they taper, they know when they are full.

the battery tells the charger when its full.

if someones parallel board only charged a battery to 80 % it has to be a defect in the board. not the charger and not the battery. try a different brand.
 

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