Allex,
Thanks for your input. I appreciate it. I am familiar with the ANT and did consider it. Due to the lack of space I elected to add the Daly active balancer to the top. It is a fairly neat installation and the only drawback is the “Delta” voltage setting. The unit is not in the way, and it is not going to fall off. It is not perfect, but is it much better now than the stock battery, and the $46.50 was a non-issue for this mod. Besides, this battery tech is temporary anyway. In another year or two my 140 will probably be using something else.
I certainly agree with you that the way Daly handles balancing with their BT BMS is Really Dumb.
Thanks again!
Bill
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After taking the case off of the 1/2 hour battery again…and rearranging the foam a bit, I was able to install the Daly active balancer inside the battery case. The BlueTooth adapter still needed to be installed outside the case in order to “wake it up” for the Daly app. For the time being, I believe this is about the best solution I can come up with for active balancing without replacing the Daly BMS.
Bill
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Here is my swap to ant bms 300A
There is a Tiny gap due to thickness of new bms. I believe we had a guy here doing the same and he 3d printed out a standoff for this, cannot find it now…would be nice to get the model and print out the same.
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Allex,
Looks good!! Please give us an update after you have used it for a while.
I have finished the modifications on my two batteries and will be heading back to the FL Panhandle to try them out in a couple of weeks. I will post an update too.
Happy Flying!!
Bill
Took a while.
But now it does autobalance when full and connected to charger and I can balance manually at whatever state of charge as well.
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Modified the bms by shortening spacers 2.5mm, thus making the whole ANT slimmer. Now the lid closes without any gaps and looks like stock.
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Alex,
Great adaptation! Once you get some flights in and are comfortable with your settings, please take some screenshots of your configuration pages. To me, ideally, the BMS should have a “warning” setting before it cuts me off in flight. I would like to set it so it chops the power to a set percentage…say 50%…which would be immediately obvious and still give me power to safely land…and also immediately take stress off of the pack.
That’s just my opinion as a pilot who has been “dumped” 4 times.
At this point, the Daly is not the answer.
Bill
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I have been looking for a large inverter that would allow me to discharge my 140 batteries to a good storage level without taking days. Sometimes I charge my batteries to go fly, conditions get marginal and then weather rolls in for several days. Here is a photo of the 1500W unit I bought on Ebay. I have plugged several appliances into it, and it works well so far. It probably will make the 140 batteries dual purpose for me too. In a power outage a battery can be used to make a super duty power supply for my internet at home…and it would allow my instantaneous water heater to work too. The input voltage range is about 70VDC to 110VDC. Above or below that range, it shuts down, so, it should be perfect for our batteries.
Bill
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Do you have a link to where you got it from?
Hey, Paul!
See if this link works. The 96VDC model has a range of about 75-115VDC…which should fit our needs.
I ordered it on the 28th of May, and it came in a couple of days ago. They shipped it for free via FedEx International.
Bill
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Here’s one more that I found:
Bill
Hey Bill,
What’s the “122” number indicate on the inverter? Thanks for the heads up on the inverter, I’ve been looking at getting one but just couldn’t find one suitable for our battery at a reasonable price.
Mike
Output. 122VAC.
Bill
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All works great after a few flights. Although I have one group(nr5) drifting a lot so it does not let me make longer flights. Have to fix this with new cells. I also want to change to bigger wires as 8AWG is too wimpy even for 160A currents in chill mode. But dont see a way now as it is really cramped in the case.
My settings are that BMS will cut out when a cell reach 2,5V or 60V on pack level.
If want a warning, the ESC have these settings in software. So you can set that it lowers the power after a given voltage.
Alex, that looks great! I appreciate the update.
I’m headed to the Florida Panhandle today and hopefully will get to test my batteries this week.
I have a weak cell or two also I suspect. Replacing them is probably going to be difficult.
You are correct…the ESC does have a setting to reduce power at a certain voltage, but I also recall Paul telling me that the option does not work and may be there for a future update. Maybe you can test it for us. I don’t want to get “dumped” again.
Bill
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Thanks for the heads up on the inverter, I won’t have to worry about the battery sitting at full charge anymore if the flying weather isn’t cooperating. Happy days!
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A quick report on the 1/2 hour battery that I retrofitted with Bluetooth and added a Daly “active” balancer. I took a 20 minute flight using it yesterday with my Spyder26. I landed with about 51%. This is the same battery that was so out of balance that it dumped me 4 times…once with a 10mph tailwind at 50 feet.
This is a 6p24s battery BTW. Here is a screenshot after the flight:
Because I am 67, I really didn’t enjoy the weight of my hour battery before launch, so, I cut it down to 7p24s…MUCH better! …also added a Daly active balancer because the strings had too much differential voltage. I flew yesterday with it and my Spyder3 24. It was a 25 minute flight with about 48% remaining. Here is a screenshot from the Daly active balancer:
After installing the balancer and taking a few flights, it looks like I don’t have any bad parallel strings after all.
I didn’t fly longer with either battery because I’m still testing them. I wanted to be sure the differential voltage had not creeped back up after the flights. It had not!
I hope this helps.
Bill
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How is it possible to get 25min flight and still have 40% Are you babying the thottle?
But I would say that 3,5V is closer to 30% of energy than 50%
I cruise between 47 and 53 amps at the beach. I’m not doing any calculations, just reporting the readings on the throttle. I do not fly by “percent left”, I watch the voltage. If you look on one of the screenshots, it reads about 86V remaining…it probably “recovered” from about 84 or 85 volts. Even at that, I could have easily flown to 77 volts safely, but I stopped early to be sure my differential was not off. When I had my hour battery, I was flying 40 minutes with 80 volts remaining.
Like Paul and Zach have said before, a lot depends on your wing size, wing efficiency and flying style. I like to cruise.
Bill
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