CellPro Power Lab 8 1000W Charger

[TJinGuy]

Originally Posted by mahbouni

Thanks for the info but I didn't mean shorting a cell or connecting two packs of different cell count. I meant connecting two identical packs but one has a damaged cell. How will the charger deal with that scenario and how will I as a user know that the cell is damaged when I see only the voltage for both cells connected in parallel?

You have to define damaged cell. If it is very low then it will drag the parallel cell down with it and the charger will report a low cell. If the charger does indeed complete the charge cycle, i.e. all cells are reported to the charger as being at 4.2V, then the pack with the good cells will be charged just fine. The pack with the "bad" cell will do whatever it is going to do. If the "bad" cell does not allow the charge cycle to complete by causing an imbalance, you will know because it will not complete. Either way there is nothing lost in comparison to charging the packs individually on the same charger.

[terrabit]

You'll most likely notice the bad cell when you discharge during flight. You'll get lots of heat (and possibly fire) and low power.

[Howard Matos]

Originally Posted by TJinGuy

Yes the polyfuses are a welcome addition to parallel charging but please don't sell them as a way to prevent fires because that is just not what happens when there is a large current flow across the balance leads and that is ALL they prevent. It simply eats the balance leads and/or balance board.

Hi:

I understand your point very well. Yes, it is true, in the case of a damaged/shorted cell, polyfuses alone will open and prevent damage to an adapter and balance connectors, but they will not prevent a fire if the charge is initiated any way. But I think a lot of customers are missing a very important aspect of the Safe Parallel Adapter design. These are not merely polyfuses we use. For lack of a better term, let's call them "thermochromatic fuses". The addition of thermochromatic ink labels onto the polyfuses alert the customer, at a glance that there is a problem immediately. If any of these labels turn color from red to black, the customer needs to immediately disconnect the packs to prevent a fire. Furthermore, the addition of fuses into the main charge leads assures that the fuse blows in the case of reverse polarity as opposed to melting down these wires. So, while I concede to your point that polyfuses alone will not prevent fire from occuring, thermochromatic fuses, in combination with fused main leads can alert the customer to a problem instantly and reduce the risk of fire.

[daddysam]

If you've been waiting for a good price on these, www.quantumhobbies has them for $239. Today the Black Friday deal is 10% off, so mine was $225 shipped!

[eggBeater1965]

I have owned a 10s for years and finally bought a PowerLab8 V2. But I must be missing something.

I tried charging a 2s Lipo last night (With about 30% left in it) and the Powerlab8 took 2 hours to charge it.

I used the balance adapter, using the preset from the factory "Lipo Generic Faster Charge" I changed the charge amps to 2C but even at 1C it should have done this around 45 mins.

The source was set to "Power Supply" 40Amp limit.

Am I doing this right? I will be reading through the manual some more, but I really don't think I am doing anything wrong. Could there be something wrong with my Powerlab or just my head?

[Lottomunch]

were you using "only" the balance cables or were you using the discharge wires of the battery too?

I forget the amperage but it's only like 2-3 amps when using the balance wires only.

Did you happen to notice the amperage the PL8 was pushing into the pack?

One thing I don't like about my PL8 is that I have to press buttons to see common charge info. I have to hit buttons on most chargers if I want to see the more obscure stuff like amps into the charger or PS voltage but to see basic info like how many amps are going into my pack I hate having to press stuff.

[eggBeater1965]

I have tried the balance only. Then the discharge leads and balance and so forth. The thing is not drawing hardly any current from the power supply.

Balanace only is 3Amps. So a 2S should be done in no time. They are 2.2 Amps packs.

I am trying a 4S but it is not looking good. They are 2.2 Amps as well, but I manually set the Powerlab8 charge rate to 4.4Amps just to see what would happen.

I thought maybe is was something limiting it from the power supply. I think I have that correct and set to a limit of 40Amps. But the PowerLab8 says the power source is 13.9 but only pulling 0.8 Amps and my Amp meter on the power supply is showing almost nothing.

The PowerLab2 Shows "Lipo Generic" "Faster Charge" 500MAH. Is that telling me it's charging at 500mah? I can believe that. But I manually told it to change at 4.4Mahs.

I mean it has to be something I am doing. But I have been through this thing.

[eggBeater1965]

Ok, I started a charge from the CSS and things seem to work fine.

So it seems to be something with the firmware. Or something I am doing.

I have V2 which is 3.2 Version.

I think I will down load the 3.21 and see where that takes me.

I maybe getting closer.......maybe......

[eggBeater1965]

I updated to 3.21 firmware. I can now charge at 4.4Amps through the discharge leads with balance leads attached.

When only balance leads it would only allow 500Mah, but I had it set to 3.8Amps and they say only 3 Amps are allowed with balancer only. So maybe it would limit me to 500Mah I am not sure. I am going to test that out some time this week.

at least I am making some progress......

[Howard Matos]

Originally Posted by eggBeater1965

I updated to 3.21 firmware. I can now charge at 4.4Amps through the discharge leads with balance leads attached.

When only balance leads it would only allow 500Mah, but I had it set to 3.8Amps and they say only 3 Amps are allowed with balancer only. So maybe it would limit me to 500Mah I am not sure. I am going to test that out some time this week.

at least I am making some progress......

Hi,

When the PL8 limits charge current to only 500 mA, it is because the unit went into Safety Charge. Safety Charge occurs when the pack is out of balance. Once the unit enters Safety Charge, it will stay there for the entire charge. It will not try a higher charge current later in the charge due to safey reasons. You can charge for a while on Safety Charge, and then re-start the charge; however, we do not recommend that you attempt this over and over because it can be dangerous.

Safety Charge could be an indication of a problem with one or more cells in the battery pack. It can also mean that the battery was discharged too far. Are you using the cutoff feature of your ESC properly? Cells should not be allowed to go below around 3 - 3.3v per cell during discharge.

If you get the pack balanced up and then be careful not to over-discharge in the future, chances are the next time you charge the battery, PL8 will not go in to Safety Charge.

[John Cook]

Hi Howard.

I have 2 x PL8 chargers for the past 2 months. Love them alot, however one's been acting up a bit lately. Started to notice that once in a rare while, it would be near charge completion then would say "replace bad pack". I charge 2x 3300mah 6s packs in parrallell with the FMA balance boards and stackable bananna plugs. Packs are fine and charge fine on the other charger. Now this is happening alot more frequently. Almost every charge now. Happens with any packs on it, so it's not bad packs and I can take the same packs the one charger has just flagged as "bad" and charge them on the other charger fine. At first I thought it was just a fluke thing. After a couple times I thought it might be a bad connection on one of the balance boards or charge leads. But I haven't found anything on looking at them. Also, this same charger has generally taken 20-40% longer to charge a set of packs since new, compared to my other charger; with same settings of fast 2c charge which I generally charge at. Both were updated to the v2 software and firmware when I got them after X-mas. I haven't bothered to look for newer firmware since.

Getting concerned that I have a bad charger. My latest attempt at trouble shooting is I've swapped over all the cables and balance boards from the "Suspect" charger onto my "good" charger and I'll see if that one starts acting up. Then I would assume that there is something bad in the cables or boards, but on inspection I can't see anything wrong with them.

Do you have any ideas????
thx

[eggBeater1965]

Howard, I sent an email to you and thanks for reply.

I am doing one thing at a time, charge small battery, move to bigger, then to parallel, in order to make sure that I understand what the PL8 is doing with little risk to anything.

So I will see what happens next. Weather and work may get in the way this week so I may not be able to post until later in the week or early next.

Thanks!

[Tim Marks]

Originally Posted by John Cook

Hi Howard.

I have 2 x PL8 chargers for the past 2 months. Love them alot, however one's been acting up a bit lately. Started to notice that once in a rare while, it would be near charge completion then would say "replace bad pack". I charge 2x 3300mah 6s packs in parrallell with the FMA balance boards and stackable bananna plugs. Packs are fine and charge fine on the other charger. Now this is happening alot more frequently. Almost every charge now. Happens with any packs on it, so it's not bad packs and I can take the same packs the one charger has just flagged as "bad" and charge them on the other charger fine. At first I thought it was just a fluke thing. After a couple times I thought it might be a bad connection on one of the balance boards or charge leads. But I haven't found anything on looking at them. Also, this same charger has generally taken 20-40% longer to charge a set of packs since new, compared to my other charger; with same settings of fast 2c charge which I generally charge at. Both were updated to the v2 software and firmware when I got them after X-mas. I haven't bothered to look for newer firmware since.

Getting concerned that I have a bad charger. My latest attempt at trouble shooting is I've swapped over all the cables and balance boards from the "Suspect" charger onto my "good" charger and I'll see if that one starts acting up. Then I would assume that there is something bad in the cables or boards, but on inspection I can't see anything wrong with them.

Do you have any ideas????
thx

Hi:

I'm answering this on Howard's behalf as he's left for the day. Hold on, this might get a little complicated, so sorry in advance for that.

Some time ago, our chief engineer added a new parameter to the CCS/PL8 firmware. This feature makes the PL8 capable of detecting a bad pack as per the specifications of an OEM customer we have (not R/C related). His intention was to put this parameter in to what we call "Developer Properties". A developer property is one that does not show listed in the CCS tabs for a normal R/C user who has either checked or not checked the "Advanced" checkbox in the CCS preset tab. The parameter "Flag Bad Pack" is what is causing your erroneous error message. You need to turn this parameter off. The reason is, your pack is not really bad. The criterion for a pack being flagged as "bad" are extremely stringent because our OEM customer has 10's of 1000's of dollars riding on each battery pack charged by the charger.

Please proceed as follows:

1) Using the CCS, go down through every user preset you have, one at a time.
2) On the Termination tab, locate the parameter "Flag Bad Pack"
3) For each of the presets, un-check this box.
4) Click the "Update" button on the CCS to save your changes to the PL8.

Can you confirm that the "Flag Bad Pack" parameter was checked for one or more of the presets that you use?

As of today, our Chief Engineer already published a new version of the CCS/firmware which removes the "Flag Bad Pack" parameter from Advanced properties and puts it into Developer properties, hidden from normal users as it should have been all along. In addition, all of the Factory Library and User Presets have this parameter defaulted OFF as they always have.

After you finish updating the PL8 that is flagging packs as "bad", launch the CCS to get the latest update, then, if there is a newer firmware, you can update your PL8 by clicking the latest firmware on the Firmware tab, and then clicking "Update Firmware".

If for any reason, you updated the CCS before you were able to complete steps 1-4 above, you will no longer be able to turn off the "Flag Bad Pack" parameter because you will not be able to see it any more. This is not a big problem. In this case proceed as follows:

If you do not have any Custom Presets that you can not easily re-create, skip step 1 below.

1) Save down any custom presets you have to your computer's HD so that you can recall them later. Click the preset number in the CCS presets tab. Use File > Save Preset # to File, name it and save it. To recall them later, click the preset number in the CCS where you want to restore the preset, then use File > Open File to Preset #. Remember though, if you recall a preset that had this flag set to on, it will be back after the restore.

2) Update the CCS, Update the firmware to latest version, then click Factory Restore from the Firmware tab.

Hope this helps! Let us know if you still have problems.

Sincerely,


Tim Marks

[John Cook]

great
thx
John