Tricopter LEDs Power source?

Loc8tor

Senior Member
I have found a plug that is 3s to 4 plug for my leds. I am looking for a 3s to 9 JST plug for my leds. I am going to use a smaller 3s battery to power my lights so I can use my battery monitor on the flight battery. Does anyone know of a connector 3s to 9 JST?
 

FinalGlideAus

terrorizing squirrels
Hobbyking sells one but it only has 6 jst connectors. You could just buy more jst connectors and splice them in.
 

xuzme720

Dedicated foam bender
Mentor
If you are powering the leds from 3S, just build the JST's into the distribution harness. That way, all you have to worry about is the one battery and it keeps your balance plug free for the alarm.
 

DDSFlyer

Senior Member
Are you needing 9 JST connectors for your LED's? Why not simplify things and solder the LED's together to end up with 1 JST connector? Or am I misunderstanding this?
 

Cyberdactyl

Misfit Multirotor Monkey
I bought THESE a few weeks ago and have so far used them in a couple places because I didn't want to continue to use a 3.5mm bullet connectors for extremely low power lighting since it was extreme overkill, and I didn't want to keep building servo connectors for lighting.

One thing about these, unless you trim the slot and notch lock, they are insanely hard to get apart once you snap them together. I've had to all but remove the notch on both sides

20140117_203859.jpg
 

Loc8tor

Senior Member
If you are powering the leds from 3S, just build the JST's into the distribution harness. That way, all you have to worry about is the one battery and it keeps your balance plug free for the alarm.

I don't have big enough shrink tubing to fit over even more wires. I hardly had big enough for what I'm using now. I'm also worried about adding additional drain to the flight battery and losing flight time. Although it would be easier that way not having to find a place for another battery and I wouldn't being adding that weight too. I also want to be able to not have the lights on everytime I fly. I guess I could add a switch in there too. One thing that bothers me is I see these guys flying the tri's and doing back flips and stuff. Or just going up or forward and they seem to have soooo much more power than me. Those things sound like they are spinning way faster than mine do.
 

xuzme720

Dedicated foam bender
Mentor
It could either be weight or setup making it seem that way. Can you make yours any lighter?
If you are putting on JST for the LEDs, and you don't want them on, just don't plug them in...
 

Loc8tor

Senior Member
It's a batbone. I don't know what else I could do to make it lighter. Everything on it is necessary for flight. Not when i have the go pro on it. Or when I have the lights. I'm using a 3s 5500 on it. What does it mean when a receiver goes into HOLD mode. What causes it? What happens? Also on my DX6 i have a throttle cut off. I don't ever want to touch it but can I make it so if it accidentally get's hit, it doesn't shut off my rotors?
 

FinalGlideAus

terrorizing squirrels
3s 5500! That's a BIG battery for a Bat Bone. Try at least halving the capacity of the battery. That will really help with your weight issue. Most people use 3s 2200 25c batteries.
 

Dumpster Jedi

The One Who Speaks
Yeah I'm a big fan of 3000mah 3s for my quads... and even then that's about as big a battery as I want to fly. Tried running 2 in parallel (6000mah) and it would lift, but was not "flyable" in my opinion.

That being said, the 3000mah feeding 4x 935kv motors gives me roughly 8-10 minute flight times with all of my voltage monitoring and LED's running from the balance plug of the same battery. I haven't run the same machine without lighting but I can't imagine the difference in flight times would be that noticeable.
 

Loc8tor

Senior Member
Yeah I'm a big fan of 3000mah 3s for my quads... and even then that's about as big a battery as I want to fly. Tried running 2 in parallel (6000mah) and it would lift, but was not "flyable" in my opinion.

That being said, the 3000mah feeding 4x 935kv motors gives me roughly 8-10 minute flight times with all of my voltage monitoring and LED's running from the balance plug of the same battery. I haven't run the same machine without lighting but I can't imagine the difference in flight times would be that noticeable.

I'm getting 15 mins flight time. I like that. It seems flyable to me. I'm by far a pro or have many hrs flight time. I started getting decent when the weather hit. just flying around the yard. I have yet to fly in an open field. Maybe then I will see where it hinders me. I have been having issue when I'm approx. 100 feet up where the front right motor just goes to half power and the thing 45's it until it hits something. I had my wire for the antenna coiled up in the batbone. I now have it sticking straight up off the copter. But haven't been able to test it yet. I don't know if that's the issue yet. 8-10 mins just doesn't seem like enough time for me.
 

Tritium

Amateur Extra Class K5TWM
Agility or Flight time: Choose one! ;) 5000mAh are usually reserved for MUCH bigger craft with 6 or more props. Bat Bone top end is about 3000mAh Unless you fly a VERY beefy power system, longer booms and 12" props.

Also I find that most multirotors with 20A esc's or larger do best with at least 40C (or greater) constant discharge rate batteries.

Thurmond
 

Loc8tor

Senior Member
I definitely am a flight time person. I don't do a lot of tricks. I just fly around casually. Time goes by fast when your flying. I don't taking off and landing soon after.
 

Dumpster Jedi

The One Who Speaks
If you're going to stick with the 5500, I wouldn't worry about running the LEDs off of it. The difference i flight time isn't likely to be noticeable. If you do want to go with a dedicated battery for lighting, I'd recommend going 5v, so you can run off a 2s pack and save weight. I only use a 1000mah 2s for my FPV stuff, it doesn't weigh a lot and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't even need one that big.
 

Gremlo

Member
for a meter of LED's off of HK, they draw 400Mah... thats 100Mah in 15 min... so you will not notice the decrease in flight time... in fact. if you run a separate battery for them you will see more flight time decrease then running them off the flight battery.

I'm VERY curious what your set-up is to lift a go-pro and the 5500Mah battery. As to the one motor losing 50% power output, id say its probably your ESC if it is the same motor every time. other question would be, does it happen the same every time? like you go 100% throttle to gain altitude and after 4 or 5 seconds that one motor shuts down? if so it could be the motor or ESC, motor might be overdrawing or something.

Lets also do the math on the lights current draw vs flight time reduction.

you say 5500Mah gives 15min of flight.

5500/15 = 366Mah/min so thats 6.1MAH per second. so 100Mah for 1 meter of lights is 100/6.1Mah/s = 16.39 seconds.

16.39 seconds of reduced flight time.
 
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xuzme720

Dedicated foam bender
Mentor
I'd say the motor shutdown might be heat. The BEC in the ESC on motor one is powering the board and Rx. It might be getting just hot enough to shut down for protection. Have you noticed it getting hot? On my tri, 1 and 2 ESC's get hotter than 3, and 1 is much hotter than 2 after only 4-5 minutes so I am planning on putting a BEC on there, I just need to get around to it.
 

FinalGlideAus

terrorizing squirrels
Can you give us your motor/prop/esc/battery info and flying weight of your bat bone Loc8tor? One of us I'm sure will do the figures to see if one of your electronic pieces are being pushed too hard and shutting down to cause the oscillating crash.