Charging the Lipos in the Car with the SkyRC Q200

[Evoandy]

Hi Folks,

i got the SkcRC Q200 charger which can charge 4 Lipos simulaniously.
It got a 12V connection next to the 230V, so I assume this will make it possible to charge with in the car battery.
I made a cable to establish connetion while being outside bashing.
Can you give me any hints what to consider doing this?
Do I need to put a fuse in between and can i Charge 2 Lipos while the car is parked or will it drain the battery that much that it wont start anymore?
would be glad if any of you would share some experience regarding this topic.

Happy Bashing

Andy

 

[w4rwf]

I personally would never charge a lipo near my vehicle but if you insist, make sure the cabling from the battery is heavy duty enough to handle what ever amperage you intend to pull from the battery. Too light of a cable and they will melt, possibly catch the insulation on fire. The charger probably has a built in fuse but I don't know anything about the charger you are using so an inline fuse would probably be a good idea. The charger also will probably cut off automatically at a certain voltage but again, that is gonna be specific to your charger. And last but not least, depending on the mah of the batteries you are trying to charge, yeah, running your car battery down so it is too weak to start the car is a very definite possibility. I know people probably do exactly what you are wanting to do. Just doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Maybe a heavy duty deep cycle battery such as a marine battery set up outside of your vehicle would be a better way to go. You don't have to have the lipo near your vehicle nor do you have to worry about running down the starting battery for your car. A starting battery for your car is not made for deep discharges and will suck the long term life out of it much quicker than a deep cycle batery which is made to withstand a deeper discharge.

Good luck!

 

[olds97_lss]

I charged a 6 or 8 5000mah 3s packs using my HTRC 150ACDC Duo (12A/2 or 150W/2) with it set to 12A output for each port and it ran my battery down far enough I needed a jump. I'd suggest keeping the car running whenever your charging. Pretty sure typical lead 12V batteries in cars don't care for "deep" cycling. After that, I'd charge while I drove from bash spot to bash spot. I've also since bought more packs, so it doesn't get used much anymore.

I had also soldered a second xt60 on it to run to my other charger so I could use it for my nitro receiver packs and transmitter.

My car is a Chrysler 300c and has the battery in the trunk. I ran 10AWG wire to the battery directly bolted to the terminals via high gauge eylets that I soldered onto the wire, which is probably 4ft in length just to give me room to move stuff. The charger uses an xt60 connector into it. Seems to work fine.

You can see the eyelet terminals in this one:

That photo was before I put the extra connector on it and before I put a power switch inline inside of it. The charger didn't have a power switch for AC or DC, so I took it apart and wired in a high amp toggle. I should have just bought a good inline switch and put it in the wire instead... would have been less work and safer.

 

[OleManTan]

My friend has a $200 spektrum s2100 and I have a $30 knockoff. We ran his full blast 12a X2 channels. We would charge our flight lipos at full blast for 20 mins and get back up flying. I would recommend keeping the car running also. You never know how far you discharged it until it's too late and you're stuck. Luckily we had two cars but we did run his battery down one time. Sucky part about the expensive spektrum is that with the fancy more expensive model you can't view the charging the same way as you can on the single screen model. Also it doesn't have a dc port so he had to buy an invertor. My cheap $30 knockoff has dc hehe. On the wall outlet plug it does 150w/dual channel and on dc, like hooking it up to the car battery straight, it does 240w. Got it off ebay for $30, called LGD240 DUAL.