Tiny Whoop Battery Questions

[Gryf]

Hi, all.

A while back I bought an Inductrix FPV with the intent of learning FPV. Had a great time... and using 220 mAH batteries, I was getting good, solid 4-minute flights. Then I accidentally damaged a couple of the motors, and replaced all four with Special Sauce motors from the Whoop store at Flite Fest, along with a set of their props. Flights were fine, but battery life went way down, like only a minute or two at best. I figured that the new motors were dragging the batteries down, and was considering swapping the battery lead out for a heavier one, also from Tiny Whoop.

Then I lost the quad. I assume it's here at home somewhere, but I sure can't find it.

So, back to square one, this time with a standard Inductrix, fitted with a Hyperion camera/VTX, soldered into the flight controller per Tiny Whoop's instructions on YouTube. Flies great, with good video to my goggles, but even with the stock Inductrix motors/props, my flight times are still really short. Meaning, I headed out to the back yard yesterday with a pocketful of freshly charged batteries and flew through all of them. Flights ranged from about 3.5 minutes down to only a few seconds. :-(

So do these little batteries just lose their stuff after a few flights? I charge them with an E-Flite Celectra 4-port charger... would I be better off with a parallel board and the standard charger I use with my larger multi-cell packs?

Thanks for any advice!

Gryf

 

[TazRC]

Howdy. I've done lots of testing with motors, props, batteries and battery connectors. 2-bladed props yield the longest flight times at the expense of a little thrust and the battery connectors make all the difference in the world.

Here's my synopses: https://tazrc.com/inductrix-fpv-light

 

[Gryf]

Brilliant, Taz! I'll give it a read.

Thanks,

Gryf

 

[three west]

more TW battery questions

I was just thinking of making a post quite similar to yours Gryf.
I'm pretty new to this, and got started with an Inductrix FPV, and was loving it. I bought some more batteries and a charger on Amazon, but after another 10 flights or so, it seems my batteries are shot. With most of them I cannot even get out of ground effect and up into the air.

I wonder if the batteries were trash, or if it was my charging that was the issue. I just grabbed any old USB wall wart that I had handy, but I see now that its a 5.1V 1150 mA (E-flite single is 4.2V 300 mA), and I wonder if my el cheapo charging board was charging at more than 1C? It has switches on the ports for 200 mAh or 500 mAh and I set them all to 200 which would suggest the board is stepping down to charge at the proper rates.

I guess my question was more about battery care, but I had heard that the battery connecter was a bottleneck.

The charger in question in my case: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XHMCBJN/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

Have your degraded over time, or have them been inconsistent/bad from the start?

 

[Gryf]

Well, progress. I've modded the Inductrix by swapping the battery lead out for a heavier one with the red JST connector. I've converted a couple of my batteries to JST as well, meaning I can now charge them on my "big" charger. Then yesterday I installed Tiny Whoop's "Special Sauce" motors, with a set of their props. All seems well! I still need to get in a full flight, but will report back.

Gryf

 

[PsyBorg]

I noticed a jump in performance on my Gremlin after switching to XT30s with heavier wire to the FC. Having the ability to transfer that current is just as important as a battery making the current as power hungry as these things are.

 

[TazRC]

Thanks for the update. How many Kv are your Special Sauce motors? Good luck with your flight.