Electrical Extras & Goodies

[sanman]

Could an electric paramotor also recharge your portable electronic devices (smartphone, tablet, garmin, tomtom, whatever) during flight?

Can an electric paramotor have extra hookups to power strobes or other decorative lighting, for night flying? (Yes, I know you’re not supposed to fly at night under FAR 103, but not everyone lives in USA. Also, such lighting can still look very nice even at twilight)

While a smoke system on a classical paramotor makes use of the engine exhaust, how could a smoke system be implemented on an electric paramotor?
Could electric power from the batteries be used to heat a person’s gloves, if their hands get cold while flying, as they often do?

What about a small supercapacitor reservoir - just enough to dump more power into the motor for 20 seconds - say, for takeoff purposes? (Even NiCad batteries have significantly higher cycle life compared to other batteries, of 2000+ cycles)

[Bob27]

@sanman

Could an electric paramotor also recharge your portable electronic devices (smartphone, tablet, garmin, tomtom, whatever) during flight?

Of course. Most of the electronics in the x4 and SP140 are powered off of 5v or close to it. I don´t see a reason why you couldn´t run directly to a usb port or through a regulator and then to usb if it is more than 1/2 volt off.

@sanman

Can an electric paramotor have extra hookups to power strobes or other decorative lighting, for night flying?

I Don´t know the exact current rating of the BEC(battery elimination circuit) that the sp140 uses, but if it has a 12v or 9v ~3a BEC output like many racing drones, you could run medium power LEDs off of that.

@sanman

While a smoke system on a classical paramotor makes use of the engine exhaust, how could a smoke system be implemented on an electric paramotor?

Many electric rc airplanes have smoke systems that are either a one time use burning cylinder type thing, or an electric refillable smoke system that operates comparably to one of the vaping devices so you could use on of those.

@sanman

Could electric power from the batteries be used to heat a person’s gloves, if their hands get cold while flying, as they often do?

I´m sure it could work, but you would need a very powerful BEC. I would imagine that the ESC in the SP140 is modified from the original. So I would imagine that they might be able to throw like a +20A 12v capable BEC in a later model of the SP140 so things like heated gloves could be powered off the paramotor.

I have already shared my ideas on super capacitors, so I will leave that for other people to give input.

[zjwhitehead]

This is something I’ve thought about a bit and definitely doable. Like others have said it’s just a matter of the right regulator. Not to tease but we had designed a USB port on the original X4 bms explicitly for the use case of charging phones and GoPros. That was never released but we do have plans for extra low voltage outputs on future ePPGs. Most already have radios, strobes, phones, cameras, etc. that run off 5-12v DC so it just makes sense.
Right now we’re focused on the core SP140 functionality but stay tuned!