Hey guys! Been searching a lot - but as a bit of an electronics newb I can’t find specifically what connectors/chargers etc. are needed to make a battery like this work with Exoray’s kits:
11.1V 5300mAh 35C Lipo Battery AKKU 3S 11.1 Volts For RC Model Max 40C
I need to know what wire connections I also need to pick up to make it work. Am I cutting those wires and reconnecting them with something like the crimp connectors? Or something more elegant?
Is this the best alternative? A relay of 9 volts? My main goal is to have the lights last about 5 hours. I find the C batteries with my heavy shell to be just ‘too’ heavy.
Anything else I need to order? Trying to get everything I need online.
PS - I’m powering the pack kit and the gun kit. I assume each needs their own so I’d get two of each.
I always wondered this myself, I absolutely love exorays light kit but the batteries are so heavy and the kits themselves were too expensive to risk trying it.
Exoray’s kits likely use a linear voltage regulator which converts the input voltage to 5V. These convert excess voltage to heat. The regulator likely requires a minimum of 5.5V in to function, so it will likely run on 6V for a while.
As his board is only powering a few LEDs, it’s likely drawing around 420mA on average. We’ll assume 500mA to be safe. The board can likely safely dissipate around 1W of heat without the regulator getting hot enough to burn you.
To calculate the amount of heat generated by a particular input voltage, we subtract the output, 5V, from the input which is the battery voltage, and multiply that by the amperage drawn, 0.5A, to get the watts dissipated.
If we assume we want to dissipate no more than 1W we can rearange the equation like so:
(InputVoltage - 5V) * 0.5A = 1W
InputVoltage - 5V = 1W / 0.5A
InputVoltage = 1W / 0.5A + 5V
Giving us:
InputVoltage = 7V
So, you should be okay with a 7.2 or 7.4V RC battery. 11-12V input should not fry the board immediately either but the board would get super hot in a jiffy and either burn out or go into thermal shutdown.
If you want to run the board on an 11V battery, go to HobbyKing, and look for a UBEC under the batteyr section… A unversal battery elimination circuit. It will allow you to select a 5V or 6V output. Select 6V and use that as the input to exoray’s kit and it should run nice and cool. And the UBEC being a switching regulator will be very efficient and will chop the excess voltage up into bits instead of turning it into heat so you’ll get a little more run time to boot.