LiPo Charger pwer supply and Power LED

[willcaddy]

Hello there,

I was just looking through the rules and I'm good on most of it but I just wanted to clarify a couple of things.

Firstly, I have a proper Turnigy charger that can balance charge my LiPo but its currently powered off of a converted PC power supply. This might be a daft question but would this be allowed at an event as its only feeding the 12v to the Aerocell 6 charger I'm using? or would i need to get a purpose made power supply. It is a 550w PC power supply so its not under much load at all. If i need a new one would any of you have any recommendations?

Secondly, I see there needs to be a power LED for when the power is on. Would any of you guys have any recommendations for the best way of doing that? I'm running off of a 6s LiPo you see.

Thanks a lot in advance!

Will

[James Williams]

My lipo charger uses a PC power supply to power it. As long as the voltage rating for the power supply matches up with the chargers you should be fine.

[willcaddy]

My lipo charger uses a PC power supply to power it. As long as the voltage rating for the power supply matches up with the chargers you should be fine.

Thank you So at an event they didn't mind you using that to charge it? I don't want to get told I cant compete for a silly reason like that is all!

Thanks again

[James Williams]

I've never had any issues with it. To be honest when they check charging equipment they're usually more interested in checking you have an adequate lipo bag. Even if hypothetically they did have an issue I'm sure they won't stop you competing at the event, just stop you from using the charger. If you can't use the charger at Cheltenham you're welcome to borrow mine since I'll be there too.

[willcaddy]

I've never had any issues with it. To be honest when they check charging equipment they're usually more interested in checking you have an adequate lipo bag. Even if hypothetically they did have an issue I'm sure they won't stop you competing at the event, just stop you from using the charger. If you can't use the charger at Cheltenham you're welcome to borrow mine since I'll be there too.

Thank you so much You are very kind This is what i love about the robot combat community, everyone is amazing xD Hope to see you there Just look for the team with Some Idiots written on there back xD

[Ocracoke]

Yeah, I've seen PC PSUs being repurposed for this. All I'd say is make sure the terminals are covered and there isn't anything obvious that will cause a short if knocked into (pit space can be tight no matter what the weight class). I'd be happy to show you my charging setup as well at Cheltenham.

As for LEDs, nowadays I always wire the LED directly into the main power system to avoid confusion. On Kaizen (my Middleweight), the LED wiring is spliced into the main wiring loom after the removable link, normally just before the speed controller. One thing to note is that you need a suitable sized resistor. When wiring up a beetleweight at the European Beetleweight championships this year, a robot was running on a 3S battery and the LED it had had a overspecced resistor (think it was rated for something on 14v, 3S LiPo nominally puts out 11.1v). The result was that the power system went haywire and wouldn't turn on properly. This was fixed with a 4S battery (which nominally puts out 14.8v).

Just something to note

[willcaddy]

Yeah, I've seen PC PSUs being repurposed for this. All I'd say is make sure the terminals are covered and there isn't anything obvious that will cause a short if knocked into (pit space can be tight no matter what the weight class). I'd be happy to show you my charging setup as well at Cheltenham.

As for LEDs, nowadays I always wire the LED directly into the main power system to avoid confusion. On Kaizen (my Middleweight), the LED wiring is spliced into the main wiring loom after the removable link, normally just before the speed controller. One thing to note is that you need a suitable sized resistor. When wiring up a beetleweight at the European Beetleweight championships this year, a robot was running on a 3S battery and the LED it had had a overspecced resistor (think it was rated for something on 14v, 3S LiPo nominally puts out 11.1v). The result was that the power system went haywire and wouldn't turn on properly. This was fixed with a 4S battery (which nominally puts out 14.8v).

Just something to note

Thank you! Yea that would be great thank you xD, I cant wait to see what others are doing

I got a 24v set of LEDs which has the right resistor and such already part of it for simplicity Ill wire it in just after the link like you have xD

Thank you for your great advice