Battery upgrade from 240 mAh to 500 mAh

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Cyientist
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Joined: Mon Mar 16, 2015 12:12 pm

Battery upgrade from 240 mAh to 500 mAh

Post by Cyientist »

Hi everyone,
We are working on Crazyflie 2.0 platforms to develop few applications. We find flight endurance is low with the existing 240mAh Lipo battery weighing 7 grams. We plan to upgrade to 500mAh weighing (12 to 15 grams) for increasing the endurance by 2-3 minutes.
1. Can a 500mAh battery weighing 14 grams be mounted on a quadcopter, or is it too large/heavy?
2. Will it increase the flight endurance?
3. Wandering if I can use a 20C/25C discharge rate battery instead of 15C
I have screened few sellers for purchasing Lithium polymer (Lipo) battery which outputs 3.7V at 500mAh with 15C discharge rate, weighing ~12 to 14 grams.
1. https://www.fabtolab.com/3.7v-500mAh-lipo
2. http://www.ebay.in/itm/Tenergy-30536-3- ... e=buyhatke
3. http://www.dx.com/p/replacement-jst-3-7 ... QK4uNKUdPM
4. http://www.dhgate.com/product/wholesale ... 1234104327
5. http://www.all-battery.com/5pcs3.7V500m ... 34065.aspx

Would be great if someone could please advise.
Many thanks
tobias
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Location: Sweden

Re: Battery upgrade from 240 mAh to 500 mAh

Post by tobias »

Sure you can switch to a bigger battery and if flight performance isn't crucial you can go quite big. We tried with a 750mAh battery and got about 16min hover time. This battery has no protection circuit (PCM) so it needs to be handled with more care. Please see one of the graphs in this blog post for an estimate flight time calculation depending on battery capacity.

What will be limiting is fitting it on the board and inside the propellers. Also make sure the battery connector polarity is correct.
Attachments
750 mAh LiPo (Has no protection circuit, PCM)
750 mAh LiPo (Has no protection circuit, PCM)
Cyientist
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Joined: Mon Mar 16, 2015 12:12 pm

Re: Battery upgrade from 240 mAh to 500 mAh

Post by Cyientist »

That's great! Thank you very much Tobias, we will have a lot more flight time.
We bought three crazyflie's 2.0 with all spare parts, trying out a lot of new possible applications.
What is the extra care to be taken if we use a non-PCM battery. Please advise.
Are there any other 750 mAh Lipo batteries with inbuilt PCM ?

Cheers !
Last edited by Cyientist on Tue Mar 17, 2015 12:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Cyientist
Beginner
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Mar 16, 2015 12:12 pm

Re: Battery upgrade from 240 mAh to 500 mAh

Post by Cyientist »

Has anyone been working on adding a battery to their crazyflie ?

Thank you !
poizone
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Posts: 59
Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2015 3:59 am
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: Battery upgrade from 240 mAh to 500 mAh

Post by poizone »

Cyientist wrote:That's great! Thank you very much Tobias, we will have a lot more flight time.
We bought three crazyflie's 2.0 with all spare parts, trying out a lot of new possible applications.
What is the extra care to be taken if we use a non-PCM battery. Please advise.
Are there any other 750 mAh Lipo batteries with inbuilt PCM ?

Cheers !
LiPo batteries are dangerous, full stop. The protection circuit is used to prevent over or undercharge situations on the battery. Both can lead to unrecoverable damage to the battery, and spontaneous combustion or explosion. Never ever leave a LiPo battery charging unattended. Without PCM you must watch the battery voltage very carefully. Buy a LiPo bag to charge in to help prevent against damage if the battery starts to overheat. Remove it from the charger and put in a safe place away from all flammibles if the battery starts to bulge.

More Details
http://www.horizonhobby.com/pdf/EFL-LiP ... rnings.pdf
One day our flies will drown out the sun in an autonomous Skynet of whirring motors and blinking lights.
frankieboy47
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Joined: Thu Mar 17, 2016 8:39 pm

Re: Battery upgrade from 240 mAh to 500 mAh

Post by frankieboy47 »

Hi.

How about parralell connecting 2 240 mAh batteries?

Frank
tobias
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Joined: Mon Jan 28, 2013 7:17 pm
Location: Sweden

Re: Battery upgrade from 240 mAh to 500 mAh

Post by tobias »

It think it is a lot easier to get a higher capacity 1 cell LiPo then putting two in parallell. Putting them in parallell might be a bit more complex. They should be att the same voltage when connecting them to not create big currents.
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