4 Cell Lipo Charger Balancer Option using separate Meters and Lipol Chargers

[Mario 2007]

Single power supply feeding 4 Apache 2020 lipol chargers, to Astro watt meters outputs wired to single balancing connector via isolation components perhaps diodes, to battery pack balancing connector.

I you have done something similar, think this will or will not work I'd like to hear it. This all is going to go into a field box to be powered by a car 12 cigarette lighter port supply or own 12-15v dc battery, so that each lipol cell in a pack can be charged and monitored independently.

[Probedude]

I don't think it will work - you won't be able to isolate the chargers from each other using diodes. You need electrically isolated power supplies. In other words, 1 power supply per charger.

See this schematic from the Cellpro to show you why (other chargers are similar)
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=1286136

I don't know exactly how the 2020 is setup, but I'll bet it's similar to the above schematic.

Dave

[Mario 2007]

something like this..

[Probedude]

something like this..

Add 1 power supply per charger and your drawing will work. There can be no common grounding of the power supplies though (sometimes they are internally grounded to the chassis).

[Mario 2007]

Add 1 power supply per charger and your drawing will work. There can be no common grounding of the power supplies though (sometimes they are internally grounded to the chassis).

Cool, the single power supply I was thinking about was for field charging purposes, to use one AC power supply source and break off 4 isolated 12V DC supplies from there to feed the chargers. For example, from automobile charging at the field, a DC to AC converter operated from the lighter socket 12-15vDC to output 110 VAC to the four separate 12 V DC Power supplies feeding the chargers.

I know a 'bought" balacing charger is more cost effective and easier to hook up, but I only found one , so far that shows, on an LCD display, the state of each cell in the pack being charged, up to 4 cells, and that was a lot more money, than going the way I am describing. The other issue I have with an all built in system, is that if anything goes wrond in the charger, makes hard to troubleshoot and fix. Big fan of separate components, here.

I'll build the custom charging station and take some pictures when its done.

Thanks for the replies.. would still like to hear from others that have done similar custom charging stations perhaps show some pictures...

[AndyKunz]

The FMA CellPro 4S charger I have gives the status of each of the 4 cells individually on the LCD display, and it was pretty cheap.

Andy

[dleroi]

Thanks for the replies.. would still like to hear from others that have done similar custom charging stations perhaps show some pictures...

Mario,

My 4-cell charger, which is powered by 4 independent AC power supplies, is described in this thread:

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=567171

Photos are in post #25. Have a look.

[Mario 2007]

Thanks for the replies guys, that FMA Charger looks nice, I like the LCD display.

So this is my custom charger so far, the only thing with this setup is that I can only 'balance' charge one 4s pack at a time, or 4 single cells, which is fine, since I also have some other basic balancers that I use for charging more than one battery pack, but without the LCD meters.