3s and 4s batteries

Hello again, lately I am finding myself with an inconvenience, I am using 3s and 4s batteries, and the question is that every time I change battery I have to confugure the voltage limit to jump the fail safe of the battery, would there be any way to control the voltage of each cell 3.5v instead 10.5v(3s) or 14(4s)?

Thanks and greetings to all

No, a few parameters need the exact voltage for them to work correctly.
You should try to just use one battery type and tune the copter to work best with that.

The alternative is to have a couple of small param “configuration” files that suits each different battery.
Save your params to a file from in MissionPlanner and open it in notepad - you will see how easy this is going to be :slight_smile:
It’s just a text file, so you can strip out everything except:

BATT_ARM_VOLT,9.5
BATT_CRT_VOLT,9.0
BATT_LOW_VOLT,9.3
MOT_BAT_VOLT_MAX,12.3
MOT_BAT_VOLT_MIN,8.4
MOT_THST_HOVER,0.28 <- sample value only, not real

and save that as your 3cell Lipo config file.
The problem you’ll see is hover has to relearn each time, so include that too.
If you tune the copter with this battery then save the PIDs too, such as (example values only):

ATC_ACCEL_R_MAX,80000
ATC_ACCEL_P_MAX,80000
ATC_ACCEL_Y_MAX,10000
ATC_ANG_RLL_P,12.0
ATC_ANG_PIT_P,12.0
ATC_ANG_YAW_P,5.0
ATC_RAT_RLL_P,0.12
ATC_RAT_RLL_I,0.12
ATC_RAT_RLL_D,0.0075
ATC_RAT_PIT_P,0.12
ATC_RAT_PIT_I,0.12
ATC_RAT_PIT_D,0.0075
ATC_RAT_YAW_P,0.66
ATC_RAT_YAW_I,0.066

Now you can also tune the copter with 4 cell Lipo and save those as another param file

BATT_ARM_VOLT,12.7
BATT_CRT_VOLT,12.0
BATT_LOW_VOLT,12.4
MOT_BAT_VOLT_MAX,16.4
MOT_BAT_VOLT_MIN,11.2
MOT_THST_HOVER,0.18 <- sample value only, not real

and the appropriate PIDs.

Now all you have to do is use MissionPlanner to apply the appropriate .param file when you change battery cells.
I still advise to pick one and just buy an extra battery rather than changing all that.

2 Likes

Hello xfacta
Is a good alternative, you have optimized the drone for each battery.
thank you

If you have a FC with enough memory to support Lua scripting, you can switch between the batteries using the transmitter, so that all these pre-tuned values (including PIDs, they also need to change!) can be set using a switch. I did that for my quads.

You can also do the same for the battery capacity, so that you can switch between various batteries of the same voltage. Be aware that if the batteries have a very different weight, you need to adapt the tuning for each of these batteries.

2 Likes

Hi all, thanks for helping me, both options are very valid.

And thanks to you I am going to change the parameters with the QGroundControl app, it allows you to create profiles very easy.

Best regards

Pd: I love the great community that is here