I believe the original voltage from 4 AA batteries is equivalent to around 6volts DC. From what I have learned in basic RF, this will reduce the amount of antenna strength and therefore reducing distance. I've heard the board can tolerate slightly above 6volts, which means a 2s lipo or Li ion would be ideal for an over all power increase. This definitely works though.
The transmission range will only alter if the RF output stage is running from the full input voltage. Not if is (as is most likely) running off the general 3.3v rail. (To maintain a constant limited output power as required by some Government agencies.) Adding a fully charged 2 cell battery will be much more likely to blow the internal step-down regulator - several folks have reported it. It seems that some regulators really are working at the limit of their capacity with 4xAA cells.
Depending on the chemistry, AA batteries (or D, C, or AAA, for that matter) don't actually produce 1.5V. It's approximate. A brand new alkaline battery actually makes ~1.55V, but it rapidly falls to ~1.25V and stays there for 80% of the actual battery life. If you use NiMH or NiCd AA rechargeable batteries, they *start* their life at 1.25 and fall to about 1.2V for most of their battery life. So 4xAA makes anywhere from 6.2 - 5V brand new and closer to 5 - 4.8V for the bulk of their usage. Almost any device with a microcontroller will have at least one voltage regulator that converts whatever it is getting from the battery into 5V or 3.3V (this radio uses both) for the system to function reliably. So no, monkeying around with the voltage within the nominal range of AA batteries is not going to hurt it. I don't know what voltage regulator it uses, so I don't know the upper limit for it, but it's very likely that it can handle power from a 2S (8.4 - 7V) Lipo or maybe even a 3S. There are regulators that can accept much more but that's not likely here - there would be no reason for them to spend the money on an unnecessarily versatile part. I absolutely am not recommending that anyone try 2S or more, but most voltage regulators have a reasonably wide range of input voltages that they can accept.
I like the idea of the principle of using a power bank. My 1uestion would be what max voltage output I can use and of course the system will only draw the amps it needs so even a 13000 mah would work as long as the voltage is correct. So I ask what is the max output voltage of the power bank i can use. Please and thank you. Adam keep up the great work , you are helping a lot of people out here in cyber land. Cheers Bob from Canada 🇨🇦
i did the same thing except i use a single lipo or 18650 and a stepup converter. It gives me a warning when the battery is low bc of the front voltage display going down to 4.xx volt, etc before dropping out. generally gives me a few minutes of low voltage to let me land.
Problem is the Powerbank dilivers 5v to the end(noch Batterywarning) and cuts the Power of if it is empty. So it can switch of in the flight. Nimh batterys decrese their voltage slowly,and the batterywarning works.
That just happened as I was working with it on the bench. No low batt warning, just off (program that failsafe, kids! ;) ). Granted, the last time I charged the battery was when I filmed this video. When I plugged it in to charge and it turned back on, the voltage was reading ~4.49V. A warning is definitely helpful, but I think I will continue using this and just regularly charge the powerbank waaaaayyyyyyy before it is even close to empty.
Dude....just found your channel. Absolutely loving your content!! Hope your channel grows fast. I’ll be supporting man. Love this mod to the controller by the way!
is it okay to step up a powerbank to 6V? I fear the range of the transmitter might be affected if it stays at 4.5V.. Got led indicators on powerbank, so no problem with knowing when the battery dies.
You could put a Boost Converter inside the battery door to jump it up to 6v. Not sure how much difference it would make, but you would get a constant 6v supply.Also many of these lipo power banks have a "Battery Gauge" on them.
have you test how far you can use transmitter because you use lot lot less voltage now. this need 6,4V and you use under 5V lot different at transformer how far can signal power go.and flysky battery alarm have adjusted 6 volt this must beeb alltime alarm under volt. need change alarm setup, and lot better have little lipo battery whit step up booster adjusted 6,"-4Volt. or big battery 7,4 V and step down board adjusted 6.2-4V but have big battery back.
Stepping down voltage has almost no difference in efficiency compared to stepping up voltage. Stepping down voltage might even be more efficient than stepping up based on the quality of the converter.
after cutting my desired length and peeling off the outer jacket on my spare usb cable theres like an extra white and green wire, what will i do to those extra wires...
Lol. That is data- (white) & data+ (green) You are ABSOLUTELY ok to just cut them off. Be careful!!!!! Nearly all USB power banks today have a sleep mode build in. Why does this mean for me....? Bad things! Being that the transmitter works on such a low power consumption rate, the power bank quite often will not know that there is a load and default to sleep mode, killing the power to the transmitter which very much could be DISASTEROUS. I know what your thinking. Add a couple of LEDs inline.... No. The power bank chipset is looking for a pwm signal announcing there is still a need for power. To combat this, build a simple 555 timer fading pulse circuit and add inline.
Unfortunately, it doesn't matter whether it's a USB charger (which is also a Liion battery with step-up converter from Liion voltage to 5V) or Lipo and step-up or Liion and step-down, it all comes out the same way, it will use up energy in any form of DC-DC conversion to heat...
Hi, your videos explaining Flysky Tx are so useful and the way of video contents are awesome. I have one question is that Can I use my 10000 mAh powerbank with input 5v & output 5.1v for my FS-I6x Tx? because using higher mAh cause any wrong to the Tx. thank you.
My solution, I'm using two Li-ion battery 14500 in place of two AA batterie and for the others places one is occuped by 2 serial diodes placed in a cylinder with same sise of à AA batterie and the other one is a short circuit also placed in a cylinde size AA. The final voltage max is 8.4V - 1.6V = 6.8V and when the Li-ion are fully discharged 6V - 1.6 = 4.4V.... Very simple !
Interesting. I would definitely like to see a plane that runs on a power bank like this. I think the main issue is the low voltage for the weight. But maybe something like a big sailplane with a motor that runs well on lower voltage would work well.
Thank you so much for your reply to me,but this is the power bank 6500mAh or 13000mAh. Can I use this power bank to replace the airplane battery?can you tell me?
I would like to request you to upload a new video that talk about the power bank with airplane but not use the Lipo battery with the airplane, Could you?
Lithium is not a good idea for rc plane as it has high discharge rate and lipo has low discharge rate. Using lithium will shut the motors off in seconds
Super dig it. I was about to do some major hacking on my tx, but this is an excellent solution. I have a bunch of those 18650 lipos that each fit in a silver usb sleeve thing that I got for like $2 a piece a couple years ago. This is perfect! I wonder if the voltage will drop gradually down or if it will hover up around 5 until the last minute, and then drop rapidly because it is meant for charging devices.
This is a bad idea, firstly you haven’t considered or mentioned the Amp rating, most power banks have between 1-2.5A output which is way more that the system is designed for, also 4 AA cells equate to 6V (1.5 x4) and your power bank on a good day can only produce 5 of the Volts the radio requires. Just because it turns the transmitter on doesn’t mean it’s going to work. At the very least you should bench test this and measure output and performance before recommending this. Lipo packs do not work for Tx power!! You do get LIFE packs made specifically for radio systems but many radio manufacturers advise even against using them. You really should do research or at least have a working knowledge of electronics before telling others to mod their hard earned equipment! This is a bad idea!
The transmitter only draws about 300-400ma so the battery capacity is fine.... It'll run fine on 5 volts as most if not all semiconductors are designed to run 5 volts as a supply voltage.. I get your logic but it's like starting your car drawing a huge current draw from the battery for the starter. At the same time, with the engine off turning on the radio... Same source two different current draws, the radio won't explode.
This mod should and does work fine. As noted in the user manual, the tx has a low voltage warning at 4.2V at factory settings. AA batteries start higher than 1.5V and slowly drop. So this system is designed to work fine at 5V USB as input. To his point, must know your battery bank and what it’s behavior is as it’s power drops. Shutting off would be BAD.
I believe the original voltage from 4 AA batteries is equivalent to around 6volts DC. From what I have learned in basic RF, this will reduce the amount of antenna strength and therefore reducing distance. I've heard the board can tolerate slightly above 6volts, which means a 2s lipo or Li ion would be ideal for an over all power increase. This definitely works though.
The transmission range will only alter if the RF output stage is running from the full input voltage. Not if is (as is most likely) running off the general 3.3v rail. (To maintain a constant limited output power as required by some Government agencies.) Adding a fully charged 2 cell battery will be much more likely to blow the internal step-down regulator - several folks have reported it. It seems that some regulators really are working at the limit of their capacity with 4xAA cells.
Depending on the chemistry, AA batteries (or D, C, or AAA, for that matter) don't actually produce 1.5V. It's approximate. A brand new alkaline battery actually makes ~1.55V, but it rapidly falls to ~1.25V and stays there for 80% of the actual battery life. If you use NiMH or NiCd AA rechargeable batteries, they *start* their life at 1.25 and fall to about 1.2V for most of their battery life. So 4xAA makes anywhere from 6.2 - 5V brand new and closer to 5 - 4.8V for the bulk of their usage. Almost any device with a microcontroller will have at least one voltage regulator that converts whatever it is getting from the battery into 5V or 3.3V (this radio uses both) for the system to function reliably. So no, monkeying around with the voltage within the nominal range of AA batteries is not going to hurt it. I don't know what voltage regulator it uses, so I don't know the upper limit for it, but it's very likely that it can handle power from a 2S (8.4 - 7V) Lipo or maybe even a 3S. There are regulators that can accept much more but that's not likely here - there would be no reason for them to spend the money on an unnecessarily versatile part. I absolutely am not recommending that anyone try 2S or more, but most voltage regulators have a reasonably wide range of input voltages that they can accept.
Awsome Man ....It Works Fine with an 2 cells lipo??? Or have to put some other component to down the voltage?
How long do 4 nimh batteries last compared to 4 Duracell or Energized batteries. I appreciate all your videos. Hope you reply.
I like the idea of the principle of using a power bank. My 1uestion would be what max voltage output I can use and of course the system will only draw the amps it needs so even a 13000 mah would work as long as the voltage is correct.
So I ask what is the max output voltage of the power bank i can use. Please and thank you.
Adam keep up the great work , you are helping a lot of people out here in cyber land.
Cheers
Bob from Canada 🇨🇦
Not sure about the max. 5v is safe. It usually takes 4×1.5v aa batteries, so maybe 6v is max.
i did the same thing except i use a single lipo or 18650 and a stepup converter. It gives me a warning when the battery is low bc of the front voltage display going down to 4.xx volt, etc before dropping out. generally gives me a few minutes of low voltage to let me land.
I wish all manufacture ditch aa and aaa and just fit 18650 docks. So much better cells .
Can you still use AA batteries as well (if the power bank dies)
Problem is the Powerbank dilivers 5v to the end(noch Batterywarning) and cuts the Power of if it is empty. So it can switch of in the flight.
Nimh batterys decrese their voltage slowly,and the batterywarning works.
Good point. I'll keep an eye out for that.
That just happened as I was working with it on the bench. No low batt warning, just off (program that failsafe, kids! ;) ). Granted, the last time I charged the battery was when I filmed this video. When I plugged it in to charge and it turned back on, the voltage was reading ~4.49V. A warning is definitely helpful, but I think I will continue using this and just regularly charge the powerbank waaaaayyyyyyy before it is even close to empty.
Dude....just found your channel. Absolutely loving your content!! Hope your channel grows fast. I’ll be supporting man. Love this mod to the controller by the way!
Thanks so much! Glad to have you!👍
@@RCwithAdam1 Brother, can we connect the usb wire to laptop for power the transmitter which is connected with transmitter in this video
is it okay to step up a powerbank to 6V? I fear the range of the transmitter might be affected if it stays at 4.5V.. Got led indicators on powerbank, so no problem with knowing when the battery dies.
What happens when power bank has low voltage? do you have some alarm or just cut off 5v?
It cuts off. Ive built it and it just cuts off when the battery runs out. Not safe for rc planes or drones without failsafe RTL.
You could put a Boost Converter inside the battery door to jump it up to 6v. Not sure how much difference it would make, but you would get a constant 6v supply.Also many of these lipo power banks have a "Battery Gauge" on them.
Brother, can we connect the usb wire to laptop for power the transmitter which is connected with transmitter in this video
Is it okay to use 5v 2.1A power bank?
Definitely!
have you test how far you can use transmitter because you use lot lot less voltage now. this need 6,4V and you use under 5V lot different at transformer how far can signal power go.and flysky battery alarm have adjusted 6 volt this must beeb alltime alarm under volt. need change alarm setup, and lot better have little lipo battery whit step up booster adjusted 6,"-4Volt. or big battery 7,4 V and step down board adjusted 6.2-4V but have big battery back.
Hi! No, I have not done a comparison test.
Stepping down voltage has almost no difference in efficiency compared to stepping up voltage. Stepping down voltage might even be more efficient than stepping up based on the quality of the converter.
But, why you dont use a life battery and put a diod to down 0.3 0.4 v, and stay safe??
my remote uses 8 AA how many lithium batteries you would recommend me to use and which configuration , thanks
You need a 12v battery , use a 3S battery
after cutting my desired length and peeling off the outer jacket on my spare usb cable theres like an extra white and green wire, what will i do to those extra wires...
Hi! Okay sounds like you have a USB data cable (as opposed to one that is only for charging). No big deal, just don't use those wires. 👍
thanks! it worked!
Lol.
That is data- (white) & data+ (green)
You are ABSOLUTELY ok to just cut them off.
Be careful!!!!!
Nearly all USB power banks today have a sleep mode build in. Why does this mean for me....?
Bad things!
Being that the transmitter works on such a low power consumption rate, the power bank quite often will not know that there is a load and default to sleep mode, killing the power to the transmitter which very much could be DISASTEROUS.
I know what your thinking. Add a couple of LEDs inline.... No. The power bank chipset is looking for a pwm signal announcing there is still a need for power.
To combat this, build a simple 555 timer fading pulse circuit and add inline.
Unfortunately, it doesn't matter whether it's a USB charger (which is also a Liion battery with step-up converter from Liion voltage to 5V) or Lipo and step-up or Liion and step-down, it all comes out the same way, it will use up energy in any form of DC-DC conversion to heat...
Hi, your videos explaining Flysky Tx are so useful and the way of video contents are awesome. I have one question is that Can I use my 10000 mAh powerbank with input 5v & output 5.1v for my FS-I6x Tx? because using higher mAh cause any wrong to the Tx.
thank you.
Hi! Thank you! Your powerbank should work just fine! 👍higher mah just means it will last longer.
@@RCwithAdam1 thank you... cheers
What it recomended or no?
My solution, I'm using two Li-ion battery 14500 in place of two AA batterie and for the others places one is occuped by 2 serial diodes placed in a cylinder with same sise of à AA batterie and the other one is a short circuit also placed in a cylinde size AA. The final voltage max is 8.4V - 1.6V = 6.8V and when the Li-ion are fully discharged 6V - 1.6 = 4.4V.... Very simple !
I use energizer 2300mah rechargeable
6v is enough to run things???
Some things! :D
probly 6.5 volts is max the radio.. 7 v .. be pushing it!
run min strat from 2s 7.4v 450m
Yeah but how did you install the wire. No resisters involved?
alls built in the charger dock! 2 types resisters
Furthermore I wanna use the power bank like this to replace the airplane.Can I ? I hope you Please reply to me when you see my SMS. Thank you
Interesting. I would definitely like to see a plane that runs on a power bank like this. I think the main issue is the low voltage for the weight. But maybe something like a big sailplane with a motor that runs well on lower voltage would work well.
yup ,try use 2020 LIFE batterys for longer flight and less power: sp light craft/glider/wing!
Thanks a lot man, you sure did help me save money for buying new parts. Happy flying XD
considering I can buy a 2600mah battery bank in Asia for a dollar, I knew I would be cycling back to check this vid again : )
Not cool. You dont have a battery low alarm. Just cut in the middle of action.
If I want to use 6500mAh ,can I?
Sure! You could use as large a battery capacity as you like, as long as it's right around 5 volts.
Thank you so much for your reply to me,but this is the power bank 6500mAh or 13000mAh. Can I use this power bank to replace the airplane battery?can you tell me?
I would like to request you to upload a new video that talk about the power bank with airplane but not use the Lipo battery with the airplane, Could you?
Lithium is not a good idea for rc plane as it has high discharge rate and lipo has low discharge rate. Using lithium will shut the motors off in seconds
Thank you for information
This is GOLD!, i was thinking about 18650 but this seems better :D
nice channel too, i like it subbed
Thanks
Cool man !
Super dig it. I was about to do some major hacking on my tx, but this is an excellent solution. I have a bunch of those 18650 lipos that each fit in a silver usb sleeve thing that I got for like $2 a piece a couple years ago. This is perfect!
I wonder if the voltage will drop gradually down or if it will hover up around 5 until the last minute, and then drop rapidly because it is meant for charging devices.
I luv your video's
This is a bad idea, firstly you haven’t considered or mentioned the Amp rating, most power banks have between 1-2.5A output which is way more that the system is designed for, also 4 AA cells equate to 6V (1.5 x4) and your power bank on a good day can only produce 5 of the Volts the radio requires. Just because it turns the transmitter on doesn’t mean it’s going to work. At the very least you should bench test this and measure output and performance before recommending this. Lipo packs do not work for Tx power!! You do get LIFE packs made specifically for radio systems but many radio manufacturers advise even against using them. You really should do research or at least have a working knowledge of electronics before telling others to mod their hard earned equipment! This is a bad idea!
lol... there are tons of others using this very same method without any problems..
The transmitter only draws about 300-400ma so the battery capacity is fine.... It'll run fine on 5 volts as most if not all semiconductors are designed to run 5 volts as a supply voltage.. I get your logic but it's like starting your car drawing a huge current draw from the battery for the starter. At the same time, with the engine off turning on the radio... Same source two different current draws, the radio won't explode.
This mod should and does work fine. As noted in the user manual, the tx has a low voltage warning at 4.2V at factory settings. AA batteries start higher than 1.5V and slowly drop. So this system is designed to work fine at 5V USB as input. To his point, must know your battery bank and what it’s behavior is as it’s power drops. Shutting off would be BAD.
You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Not one bit of your concerns are true
Can i have a shout out next video plz
No.
First