glennbalsam said:
I've just had my p2 battery arrive making me the proud owner of 2. I didn't get any instructions with the first but the instructions with the second didn't really relate to the battery? After destroying a brand new 2.2 lipo because know one told me not to run it to low I'm worried I may mess this p2 battery up. Is there any hard and fast rules when and how to charge the new p2. Obviously after paying a ridiculous price for it I want to maintain the optimum charge and use rate.
Incidentally why aren't they nmh and have smart chargers that condition the battery and get rid of the memory lock? Seems like we have gone backwards in the battery technology?
I think you misunderstand current battery technology. Current lithium chemistry batteries have substantially higher energy density than NiMH, and have protections and characteristics that make them very beneficial, including safe usage in parallel configurations, something you shouldn't do with NiMH. The smart charger is built into the P2 battery, it has charging, balancing, and discharge protection built in, as well as continuos monitoring of battery health. It's a state of the art battery by all standards. And it does have a gauge - each of the four lights gives you a rough estimate of remaining charge, and you can always plug the Phantom into your computer to get a full voltage/% readout of remaining battery charge.
You'll be happy to know that there's no "memory" with these batteries (nor with li-ion or NiMH either). That was a bygone artifact of the NiCad days.
Sorry you lost a 2200mah battery to over-discharge, that's one of the things you have be careful of. I'd respectfully suggest that there's an element of personal responsibility involved here; maybe "nobody told you" about the danger, but ultimately you are yourself responsible for reading the manual and being familiar with the limits and care of your equipment, and falling back on what a salesperson or mentor or internet board tells you is simply not going to get you to a point of really becoming an informed pilot. Anyone who's been in RC for more than a few weeks picks up a bit on battery care and conditioning, by necessity. Without attributing blame, I'd just suggest that you spend some time reading up and getting more familiar with lipo batteries--a little knowledge will definitively help you keep them operating well for along time!
I'll also say that would be beneficial to avoid the somewhat intuitive practice of always keeping your lipos fully charged. That's actually not very good for them, and it's recommended that you keep them at ~50-60% (~3.80v) for long-term storage.
