LOS Voltage Monitoring with LED screen

[kah00na]

When I'm flying LOS (Line Of Sight), I sometimes start to think I've been flying too long and may have my low voltage indicator set too low on my KK2 board. I then land it, disarm it, and read the voltage on the LCD screen. Sometimes I'm right and sometimes I it is okay and I just have more mAh left to fly. I looked on ebay and found these 5-30v LCD screen monitors for about $1.50. All they do is display the voltage of your battery. I put one on my tricopter based off Hall Studio's design and my other wooden bones tricopter. With these in place, I just need to fly close enough to myself to quickly see it and keep flying. You can see where I put in a short extension adapter so I can reuse this or move it on to future vehicles if I want to. Does anyone else use these or something different? Maybe I'm the only one that uses 3S and 4S batteries for flying.

 

[xuzme720]

That's a nice setup. I used something similar on my audio build in my truck to monitor system voltage and it never occurred to me to use one on my aircraft! Very cool idea!

 

[Craftydan]

kah00na, how well does it work in daylight?

Neat idea, but between the ball of fire in the sky during the day or the christmas-tree-worth-of-lights on the frame at night, I wonder if it would be bright enough to read when it's in the air.

Personally, I hate the land/measure/fly/land method for managing remaining charge. It took a few flights to dial in the onboard battery alarm, but it's a fair substitute. I've got one of these I've got no purpose for, I might just wire it up to see how it goes.

 

[kah00na]

kah00na, how well does it work in daylight?

It's near impossible to see if it is in direct sunlight, but if it is in the shade or on the shaded side of the tricopter, you can make it out pretty well. At first I only had it on one of my tricopters, then I started noticing how much I missed it on the other so I had to get another. My kids have a 36 volt motorcycle so I have another on order that goes up to 50v for it.

 

[Johan]

Hi, that's nice, I just bought 2 for $1.69 a piece and free (but very slow so it seems) shipping.

 

[kah00na]

Kind of resurrecting an old thread here, but I thought some people would be interested in seeing the LCD screen in a transmitter:

 

[Tritium]

I have 6 of those myself. I also have been buying the adjustable Buck Regulator boards WAY cheaper than UBEC's ($1.25 ea). They put out about 1.5A (can parallel boards for more current) with a heatsink attached to the chip and have a MUCH higher voltage input range than nearly ALL UBEC's. Great for Multirotors.

Thurmond