Here is 5ah LiFePo4 for $35.99 although if it were me, I'd go a little bigger. You never know when you might want to use that battery for something else.
Max
On Monday, November 21, 2022, 08:57:54 AM CST, N1EDC <dragonfanatic90@...> wrote:
Here are a couple links:
5AH battery for $35
Charger for $8.50
Voltage alarm for $4
It's honestly hard to beat that kind of value.
Plug the battery into the charger on the balance port to charge, and in use plug the voltage checker into the balance port and the radio into the power lead.? When the voltage checker starts (loudly!) beeping at you the battery is dead and you need to stop using it.
The beeper is crazy loud and designed to be heard when flying on a drone, so I fill the two ports for the beepers with hot glue, which reduces it to indoor volume.
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I hate the cache...
LIfepo4 fully charged is 3.7V (some 3.65) adn during discharge the average
is about 3.2V.
That makes a 4S battery about ideal for nominal 12V gear.
Allison
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Please use the forum, offline and private will go to bit bucket.
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I've also never seen what the voltage is supposed to be under various loads.
Max
On Monday, November 21, 2022, 02:18:05 PM CST, Gerald Sherman <ve4gks@...> wrote:
From what I have seen & heard, a 4-cell LiFePO4 battery is easier to
handle and safer than Li-ion.? I have discharge curve info on the iron
battery, and I am attaching it.? This seems to be publicly available.
Gerry Sherman
Sent by the Linux Thunderbird
On 2022-11-21 18:42, Keith VE7GDH wrote:
> Allison KB1GMX wrote¡
>
>> They can catch fire if mis handled.
> My preference would be 4S LiFePO4. The voltage curve is much flatter during discharge, you can get more charge-discharge cycles from them, and more useful energy from them. They are also much safer.
>
> --
> 73 Keith VE7GDH
>
>
>
>
>
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I'm partial to 12V cordless tool batteries.? They're much safer than bare Li-Po bricks because they have short circuit protection and they automatically turn off when they're discharged so that you can't ruin them by over-discharging them.? Also, the balancing circuitry is inside them, so you just drop them in the charger.
Cheers,
Don? ?
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Gerald,
That is absolutely true.
First LIFePo4 the nominal votlage per cell is 2.7 fully charged, and 3.2V during extended discharge.
Where the LiPo is 4.2V per cell and 3.7 during discharge.
That makes a LiFePo4 a better match as a 4S (4 cells series) for nominal 12V gear.?
I have experience with both and allowing for the voltage issues they are both good.
I opted for the liFePo4 for the 20Ah and 100Ah batteries I have as they hit the votages
needed for the gear I wish to run.
At the other extreme the 3S Lipo (pouch and 18650 cells) ar nearly perfect for the
FT817 that behaves well at 11V and heats less at below 13V.? SO I have a nice 11AH
(3S4P) pack made up with BMB (battery management board) that makes it easier
to charge safely and protect the battery.??
Generally the easy way is the complete replacement for the lead gell cells and in?
equivilent Ah size using LifePo4 you get much less weight and generally many
times longer lifetime with most rated for far more than 1000 charge discharge
cycles or about 5 to 10 times that of lead gell cells.? I've never had a gell cell
last 200 cycles and most failed much sooner if discharged to 40% remaining.
Also lead requires (MUST) when discharged be recharged 100%.
Example Amazon?
Yes that's one long line!
What it is:? 12V 6Ah lifepo4 weighing in a 1.63 pounds and with charger for 47.99
Opinion, I have three larger batteries (12, 24 and 100ah) sold under the
TalentCell label the oldest is 3 years of use and the newest is 2 years.?
Works as expected.? No, they don't pay me.??
Allison
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Please use the forum, offline and private will go to bit bucket.
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I've seen those charts before. I have to wonder though, since if you charge up a LiFePo4 battery and let it sit over night it will show about 13.25 volts. According to the chart it would already be down to almost 70%. I don't think so! I know mine aren't. I have a 5ah, 12ah, three 20ah and four 100ah. They all show the same voltage. Great batteries except you can't charge them if the battery temperature is below freezing, but then again I don't know of any lithium type battery that you can.
Max
On Monday, November 21, 2022, 02:18:05 PM CST, Gerald Sherman <ve4gks@...> wrote:
From what I have seen & heard, a 4-cell LiFePO4 battery is easier to
handle and safer than Li-ion.? I have discharge curve info on the iron
battery, and I am attaching it.? This seems to be publicly available.
Gerry Sherman
Sent by the Linux Thunderbird
On 2022-11-21 18:42, Keith VE7GDH wrote:
> Allison KB1GMX wrote¡
>
>> They can catch fire if mis handled.
> My preference would be 4S LiFePO4. The voltage curve is much flatter during discharge, you can get more charge-discharge cycles from them, and more useful energy from them. They are also much safer.
>
> --
> 73 Keith VE7GDH
>
>
>
>
>
|
From what I have seen & heard, a 4-cell LiFePO4 battery is easier to handle and safer than Li-ion.? I have discharge curve info on the iron battery, and I am attaching it.? This seems to be publicly available.
Gerry Sherman
Sent by the Linux Thunderbird
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
On 2022-11-21 18:42, Keith VE7GDH wrote: Allison KB1GMX wrote¡
They can catch fire if mis handled. My preference would be 4S LiFePO4. The voltage curve is much flatter during discharge, you can get more charge-discharge cycles from them, and more useful energy from them. They are also much safer.
--
73 Keith VE7GDH
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Allison KB1GMX wrote¡ They can catch fire if mis handled. My preference would be 4S LiFePO4. The voltage curve is much flatter during discharge, you can get more charge-discharge cycles from them, and more useful energy from them. They are also much safer. -- 73 Keith VE7GDH
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Its a good deal. ?
Some notes:
its a pouch cell battery so do not bend fold or bruse lest it get unhappy. ?They can catch fire if mis handled.?
?Also its 3s, ?that means 3 cells in series or 12.6v fully charged and 11.4v during the usefull part of a charge cycle. ??
The latter may be marginal for some radios.
Getting the correct charger is a must.
With all due care i have found lithium battery tech to be very good. This is based on my use over 25 years.
Over that time the tech has improved greatly.
Allison
------------------
Please use the forum, offline and private will go to bit bucket.
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I agree, that does seem unbeatable. And lighter than two 6V gel batteries. Probably goes farther before requiring recharge, too.
Thanks.
Bob KK5R
On Monday, November 21, 2022 at 09:57:54 AM EST, N1EDC <dragonfanatic90@...> wrote:
Here are a couple links:
5AH battery for $35
Charger for $8.50
Voltage alarm for $4
It's honestly hard to beat that kind of value.
Plug the battery into the charger on the balance port to charge, and in use plug the voltage checker into the balance port and the radio into the power lead.? When the voltage checker starts (loudly!) beeping at you the battery is dead and you need to stop using it.
The beeper is crazy loud and designed to be heard when flying on a drone, so I fill the two ports for the beepers with hot glue, which reduces it to indoor volume.
|
Re: Nano Every support on KD8CEC - interest?
Tom,
Thanks for your thoughts as you explore the Every. Had not considered a SD card since it wasn't part of the original Raduino desigh. But certainly an option. Think the main disadvantages is occupied space on the board and access (got to take the cover off).. Guess you could do a ribbon cable, but I am not RF smart enough to understand whether that could cause any noise in the radio (or not).
I have thought about the EEPROM libraries that offered a Python dictionary type access. I used dictionaries a lot in my python re-implementation of the uBITX Memory Manager. I avoided them originally because I was trying to minimize changes in the KD8CEC code until it got stabilized on new platforms. But if I start thinking about a re-organization of the EEPROM based on available size, it is certainly an option. The current way things are stored and accessed in EEPROM has been one of my headaches in the port. The READ/WRITE functions of EEPROM library will read a INT/LONG, etc. But when the size of an INT changes from 16 to 32 bits, the 32 bit platform gets a few extra extraneous bytes that can create interesting? bugs...
73
Mark
--
AJ6CU
KD8CEC 2.0, Nextion Screens,? and open source uBITX Raduino boards for Arduino IOT, BLE, RP2040, Teensy
https://github.com/aj6cu
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Here are a couple links:
5AH battery for $35
Charger for $8.50
Voltage alarm for $4
It's honestly hard to beat that kind of value.
Plug the battery into the charger on the balance port to charge, and in use plug the voltage checker into the balance port and the radio into the power lead.? When the voltage checker starts (loudly!) beeping at you the battery is dead and you need to stop using it.
The beeper is crazy loud and designed to be heard when flying on a drone, so I fill the two ports for the beepers with hot glue, which reduces it to indoor volume.
|
My go-to has always been cheap lipo drone batteries.? You can get a 4-5AH 3S drone battery for about $30.? Throw in a $10 balance charger and a $3 battery voltage alarm and you have a complete battery system for under $50 that is lightweight and puts out plenty of current for high draw TX.
The only labor required is replacing the battery connector or sourcing an adapter.
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Aaron, my V4 is much modified with the KD8CEC sketch and the Nextion color touch screen display that is the same size as the V6 display. Plus, I am running the second Arduino processor and a separate AGC board, so I am sure my power use is at least the same as a V6 if not more, but no problem for that battery pack.
I understand that electrically the V6 is the same circuit as the V5 that used a 2-line LCD display, so you could go backwards using the V5 software or selecting the appropriate display from the KD8CEC software options.
=Vic=
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I agree, Jim. That unit does look good.
I worked for IBM's Engineering Development Laboratory and was part of a three man team that layed out the PC boards for the IBM Selectric Composer which meant laying out, etching and stuffing two 8-1/2X11 boards and then testing them for functionality. Composers today put that technology back in the primitive area but laying out, etching and stuffing boards became a big part of my activities and I, no doubt lost months of radio operating time because of my bent for building. Learned a lot from it, though.
That soldering station does look good. IBM used wave soldering which required trimming leads after going through the lead trimmer. The V6 board, to me, is a marvelous development and refinement of technology. Beautiful, in fact... I think it would be a shame to attempt to modify it. Even trying other components would be mostly limited to one or two components ¡ª it works two well to mess with it. In the future, I'll buy later versions instead of modifying what I have. An add-on antenna tuner board would be interesting, though. I've gotten used to ATU's on my other rigs and don't like risking the V6 final transistors which forces me to use a manual tuner, where required.?
I noticed that the soldering station includes a roll of solder so it's a pretty complete kit. My "station" at IBM consisted of a simple rheostat to adjust the temperature and even that was more than most people had at that time.
I've made keyers, repeaters, CW keyboards plus a bunch of other ham radio related items. I no doubt wound have saved a lot of time if I had one of those soldering stations.Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Bob KK5R
On Sunday, November 20, 2022 at 07:22:31 PM EST, Jim Burns <outbackerwb4ilp@...> wrote:
Yihua 862BD+ has great reviews on Amazon.? I just bought one for $108.00 USD.? It has an iron and hot air wand and comes with accessories.? ?It arrived in 3 or 4 days.? I haven't used it yet but the Amazon reviews say that it is very good.
Jim WB4ILP?
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Yihua 862BD+ has great reviews on Amazon.? I just bought one for $108.00 USD.? It has an iron and hot air wand and comes with accessories.? ?It arrived in 3 or 4 days.? I haven't used it yet but the Amazon reviews say that it is very good.
Jim WB4ILP?
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Re: Nano Every support on KD8CEC - interest?
On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 09:51 AM, Mark Hatch wrote:
So there are two options here:
1. Add an external EEPROM? - I have done that and boards designs are available on github (see sig below) The latest commit has a NANO Every #define
2. Use a EEPROM to flash emulator - not done yet
After reading the Nano every posts I decided to order one direct from the Arduino store. Looks like an interesting board with a second (more powerful? ARM) processor on board to program the 8 bit AVR chip. Might be some possibilities to take advantage there. Somehow direct memory storage manipulation of the radio settings bothers me like self modifying code does. Although I've gleefully done both.?However, in the "Every" case enough flash that a proper dictionary type parameter storage (along with some "cat" commands to modify them) could be implemented.? What about using one of the cheap tiny SD card adaptors and a small capacity SD card? I believe if you don't care about speed only a very few pins of the SD card need to be connected. Probably enough flash on the Every processor to include a DOS file system, or just just treat the SD card like a serial storage device with no file system. Could even solder wires directly to a SD card if no file system and no need to ever remove it from the system. Couple more observations about the Every. I'm surprised they did not include a crystal. They went all out and included additional fancy power management parts and a whole extra processor, why not another 10 cents for a crystal? (Maybe just a 32khz crystal and calibrate the main RC CPU clock and baud rates to the 32khz crystal on startup) I'm looking forward to playing with the Every, also bought the screw terminal board to go with it. Also, I'm finding I like these AVR 0-Series chips with the single pin programming/debug interface. I've been using the tiny 8 pin versions for various projects, so will be interesting to have a Mega version of these chips.? Tom, wb6b
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Thanks, Vic That is something worth checking out. I wonder how it would do with the uBITX V6 with the larger TFT screen (Does your uBITX V5 have the TFT or LCD display? I'm not sure when the uBITX with the 2.8" TFT came out.) I've always used one of those $10 cell phone charger battery packs to power my Raspberry Pi in the field.? If I were to be able to start operating portable a lot, is it possible to change my display to a LCD instead of the TFT? -- '72
Aaron K5ATG
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Re: Nano Every support on KD8CEC - interest?
Another idea is to detect the size of the eeprom, and adjust what is stored/retrived accordingly. There is a lot of cruft in the 1024 EEPROM and there is *lots8 of additional space in the external eeprom.?
73
Mark
--
AJ6CU
KD8CEC 2.0, Nextion Screens,? and open source uBITX Raduino boards for Arduino IOT, BLE, RP2040, Teensy
https://github.com/aj6cu
|
Nano Every support on KD8CEC - interest?
There has been some interest expressed in getting KD8CEC Nano Every (more memory, more flash storage, slightly faster) working with KD8CEC.
The challenge here is that the Nano Every only has 256 bytes of EEPROM and KD8CEC uses all of the 1024 bytes available on the Nano 3.0. (Enhanced CW Support, Keyer, VFO Memory, WSPR, etc)
The good news is that if you want a functioning radio, you don't seem to loose much functionality at 256 bytes (at least with the limited tests I have done). However, the uBITX Memory Manager will likely *not* work because the first thing it does when loading the EEPROM is ask for 1024 bytes and so it will timeout..
So there are two options here:
1. Add an external EEPROM? - I have done that and boards designs are available on github (see sig below) The latest commit has a NANO Every #define
2. Use a EEPROM to flash emulator - not done yet
In either case, you will need a new version of KD8CEC. And any work I do will be in the 2.0 (not 1.2) base.(others are welcome to retrofit to 1.2 of course)
The benefit with #2 is that this supports *existing* Raduino boards. So you buy a Nano Every (Mouser and Digikey have them in stock), Steps would be:
a. backup your EEPROM using? uBITX Memory Manager
b. Update the firmware to a version that supports this configuration
c. Plug the Nano Every in
d. Restore the EEPROM to the new configuration.
There are two problems with this approach:
1. The current flash emulators that I have found for the Nano/Nano Every require the EEPROM emulation space to be re-loaded after *every* firmware update. -hasn't been a lot of new KD8CEC firmware versions lately...
2. The flash emulators require an explicit "commit()" to update the emulation space to minimize EEPROM writes. I haven't figured out where to put such a statement and it is likely you will loose some features like setting things to "last VFO-A/B memory" on boot up.
I am not thrilled with the disadvantages of the EEPROM emulation software. And personally, I wouldn't go down that path. If I needed the benefits of a Nano Every, I would just give up the extra features of KD8CEC that dont fit into 256 bytes or go for an external EEPROM settup.? But, I have plenty of Raduinos of my own design running with an external EEPROM. So? I am not representative here.
So thought I would ask the community? Perhaps someone has found a better flash eeprom-flash emulation alternative?
73
Mark
--
AJ6CU
KD8CEC 2.0, Nextion Screens,? and open source uBITX Raduino boards for Arduino IOT, BLE, RP2040, Teensy
https://github.com/aj6cu
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Don LeRoi
Bob Lunsford
Vic WA4THR
Aaron K5ATG