Batteries Battery Conversion Mod

[Averybadman96]

Hello all,

I'm hoping to pick the brains of those who know about battery conversions in relation to mods. I sort of understand battery conversion but I don't want to fry my equipment or blow up batteries. I have a Yuneec steadygrip that burns through 8 AA batteries very quickly. I would like to modify it to accept a lipo battery for easy rechargeability, and length of play. I know the AA batteries are 1.5V each with 12V total power. I was thinking that I need to get as close to the 12V as possible which would be 11.1V, and then get a battery with the highest maH. Am I correct or not? The connections are a simple red (+) wire and black (-) wire for power feeding the AA battery bay, it would be very simple to cut the red and black wire and solder a JST or Futaba connector to those wires. Any thoughts from the experts out there?

Thank You,
AveryBadman96

 

[RandyDSok]

Find out what the rated amperage load is first... JST and Futaba connectors aren't going to carry a very high load and you'll want a connector that can handle it.

While the nominal voltage of most lipo batteries is 3.7v per cell... the full charge is 4.2v... a 3 cell lipo battery will put out up to 12.6v which is probably going to be fine.

 

[Averybadman96]

Find out what the rated amperage load is first... JST and Futaba connectors aren't going to carry a very high load and you'll want a connector that can handle it.

While the nominal voltage of most lipo batteries is 3.7v per cell... the full charge is 4.2v... a 3 cell lipo battery will put out up to 12.6v which is probably going to be fine.

The only thing it says for requirement are: 2850mAh 8x 1.5V AA Batteries. Later it says regarding camera power consumption: 10W

 

[RandyDSok]

So you know it's 12v and 10w... using Ohm's law you can calculate the amperage at 0.84a ( rounded up a bit )

A 1a connector would be fair... I like to use over rated connectors just in case... so look for one that supports at least 1.5-2a and it shouldn't over heat.

 

[Admiral]

Found this on the Yuneec Forum seems just what you need.

http://yuneec-forum.com/threads/how-to-simple-lipo-upgrade-for-the-steadygrip-tripple-run-time.554/

 

[Tony]

1.5 hours vs 20 minutes and just with a 1000mah pack? Yea, I would definitely do the lipo mod on that thing. If you don't mind the extra weight or a battery under the grip instead of inside, you could put a 2200 on there for over double the minutes, so something like 3+ hours.

 

[Averybadman96]

1.5 hours vs 20 minutes and just with a 1000mah pack? Yea, I would definitely do the lipo mod on that thing. If you don't mind the extra weight or a battery under the grip instead of inside, you could put a 2200 on there for over double the minutes, so something like 3+ hours.

The mod you referred to was for a CGO2 with 6x AA batteries and I have the newer CGO3 version with 8x AA batteries. In fact at closer look all of the mods online with the steadygrip were the older 6x AA battery version. That is why I wanted to make sure my math was correct being: 8x 1.5V 2200mAh single cell batteries = 1 11.1V 2200-2650mAh 8cell Lipo battery.

 

[Tony]

That is correct. Just stick a 2200-2650 3S pack on it and call it done. I would do like they did on that article and put a low voltage alarm on it to help save the battery and keep from running it down too low.