I only put "charger" on title to allow other people to find this thread easily... however we know this is not the case!
The Inspire 1 comes with a 100Watt Power Supply to be used with the built in charger on the batteries. These ask up to 180Watts (rated, but actually ask up to 240amps or so if available) from the power supply which is in excess of 80Watts of what it can "deliver" for just a single battery. When charging the battery and the remote controller at once this might or not lead to higher temperatures on the power supply, slower times on the charging of the batteries and remote controller... It certainly leaves you without the ability to charge multiple batteries at the same time as the power supply does not offer but one "charging terminal" and it would be "underpowered". The Remote controller requires 100Watts sot the provided power supply might be adequate for charging it by itself!
So, this leaves us with Aftermarket power supply units... and DIY options for the time being. These can be very expensive, and easily reach $300 and above, and as of now are not easily found "in stock"(for the already built ones).
The Inspire 1 Supplied Power supply costs about $60 to $80 USD, so I went to find a solution that would have more available Watts for multiple battery charging options at a comparable price and that if it broke my wallet nor my appendix would suffer the consequences!
PARTS LIST:
This is what I came up with: (links provided)
So for $81.00 you can charge 2 batteries and a remote at once... and have about 40watts to spare or charge 3 batteries at once with a deficiency of about 40watts..which is still better than 80watts deficit on a single battery when using provided Power Supply.
It it not the prettiest... however it delivers!!! and for about the price of a single Inspire 1 Power Supply... Might be a great buy for those of us that charge Home.. and carry the smaller power supply as your "travel" power supply or you can certainly travel with this one as as well... and even dress it up in a box...
Instead of loading 6 batteries into a single large capacity Power supply thus taking the chance that if it burns out (putting you out from the ability to charge ANY battery) you can buy two of these, and if something breaks on one you still have a second one to keep you going for less than half the price!
Hit me up with questions, suggestions or concerns....
We all know the other thread that is ongoing about this topic...and this is to go along side it, but please refrain from starting fires (useless arguments)...
I have now tested for wattage consumption, temperature ranges while charging, noise on the power supplies, charging times, add-ons to maximize efficiency
on this first post you can find answers to the following questions:
1. Do batteries charge faster? How much faster? What is the percentage?
2. Do they get warmer? How much warmer?
3. Does Power supply get hot? how much?
4. What is the wattage consumption of batteries under both Power supplies (DJI and MEIND) while chargIng?
Here are videos associated to all tests:
OSCILLOSPE RESULTS (please match ripples to actual captures here:OSCILLOSCOPE CAPTURES)
DJI POWER ADAPTER
Open circuit: 26.078V 44mVpp (ripple 1-File)
Charging: 25.7V 311 Mvpp (ripple 2-File)
2.3A down to 2.1A 210MVpp Ripple 6
MEIND ADAPTER
Open Circuit: 26.3V 124mVpp Ripple3
Charging: 26.0V 168mVpp ripple4
26.1V 191mVpp ripple5
2.4a down to 2.2a
Guys...after lots of testing I want to share a finding that it is of HUGE importance to those of you considering a DIY Battery Power supply. I have mentioned this before on this thread.. but I am surprised however no more questions were made about it... and I feel there has to be further explanation, and to bring it to this first post for people to notice it and pay as much attention to it as it is deserved, as many people do not take the time to read whole threads or just want to get the "idea" as to what is being exposed. All this before you go and try decide to spend the money on anything over 240W per battery..
The I1 batteries have an overamperage built in protection that limits the intake of power to 10A. What does this mean? It means that if you try to load MORE than 10 AMPS to a single charging terminal Leading to a single battery (I.e putting 300watts (12.5amps) at 24V hoping the battery will only "take" what it wants/needs regardless of what is available (which for this battery is NOT the case after 10a) it will trigger an overamperage protection and it puts the battery into a "protection mode" that does NOT allow this higher amperages to reach/charge the battery. I do not know if this is a software driven harware operation, or simply via a "relay" of sorts that activates it. You can verify this state by looking at the LEDS. It would be the second LED from the bottom going up, and this one would be blinking twice every second followed by a space and repeating the indication over and over until you press the power button to "turn off"/acknowledge the state.
There is a way to "disable" this "safety feature"I found by turning the battery ON before starting the charge. I believe this is a defficiency on the brains of the battery and that it should NOT allow me to do this. I believe what happens is that by turning the battery ON, it's circutry is now ready to allow higher amperage rates to be delivered/discharged to/by BIRD while on flight and as so it disables the overamperage protection to accomplish this.. and since it is not expecting to be charged... at this time. If you do this..... (PLEASE DONT DO IT) the battery will start charging and take in excess of 450Watts (as verified via Watts meter) when connected singularly to a 500watts PS. It does charge it faster.... but at what cost? and how safe? I would not even want to find out what would happen if you do this while connected to a 1200W power supply for a while and you turn on the battery to "try it out".... my suggestion is DONT>>> not even with 500Watts.. as it might definitely burn the battery or even WORSE (this is a big unknown)and not something I will test as I have some ideas as to what the outcome might be...
Anyways... when confronted with this method, The battery then attempts to bring the amperage down to a manageable amperage over several minutes and seems to regulate it down to the 10A threshold... the cells are limited to the charging rate of (240watts at 24v).
I am not comfortable with this approach, as the Internal circuitry IS working overtime to try and regulate the over Amperage.
I made this video that shows this. Notice the beginning voltage. This is coming from the Power supply, as the battery is not yet connected. Once the battery is connected it starts to attempt charging and you see the spike of amperage from zero amps to about 25amps. The battery's voltage is now being displayed. Also notice how the battery takes in excess of 588watts at one point. (over 20amps) before establishing: " WHOAAAHH!!! wait a second... this is WAYY more than I can manage... I DONT WANT IT..." (lol) and shutting the charging off....
Somehow.. (at around 80% of battery capacity) the battery IS able to take the Higher Amperage over 10amps provided by the Power supply. (I tested 20amps only so cannot confirm if this is the case with higher wattage PSU's) and not struggle to regulate it's amperage. It brings the Amperage down to about 260watts and it is happy and all is OK. Near 90% and up, the Battery regulates the amperage to about 25 to 50watts consumption for the rest of the charge until it reaches 100%, hence the reason the Temperatures of the provided DJI power supply go down progressively towards the end of charge cycle, as it is only using about 50% of it's rated 100watts that it can provide.
The solution?
Get a power supply that has MULTIPLE charging terminals, preferably of 10Amps or less PER TERMINAL or that you can regulate them down to it... It is ok if you have 1200 WATTS JUST NOT ON A SINGLE TERMINAL unless you connect 5 batteries in parallel everytime you are charging to diminish the amperage Load to the manageable 10Amps. If you have 4 Batteries hooked on parallel onto a single 1200watt PSU there is still about 200 to 240watts of available power and this will be distributed among the batteries.. it is still about 2 amps or so OVER the 10amp each battery can take and this will result on the "relay being triggered". I tested this with my 500watt and 2 batteries.
Have an amperage regulator INLINE for each of the charging terminal leads and bring the wattage down to the 10amp/240watts the battery can handle. You might want to have something else drawing excess Amperage hooked on while charging.. .this might allow you to not have to charge batteries at once on a 1200W PSU if you are using 200watts on something else.
In my suggested Battery charger I have 3 Batteries charging to a 500watts multiple terminal PSU, however EACH terminal IS 20amps and not 10, but putting 3 batteries to it leaves the Power supply short of wattage. However, and because the batteries do not demand full 240watts to 260watts the entire time, the Power supply does not suffer.. A more suitable power supply though would be a 750W to 800w for 3 batteries...
The remote controllers draw less than 50 watts and they do not seem to have brains like the battery does... so they do take 20amps and charge... but I do not like to put soo much into them so I just use the provided DJI power supply to charge these.
As good measure and just to make sure...(not that the temperatures have raised to the alarming rates of the DJI power supply) I am using one of the Power supply leads and added yet a second fan (the Meind has a built in one) and have it blowing air right at the side of it.
That sounds quite feesable. The charger on each battery will only demand 180W each from the Power supply and the remote will only demand 100W? If the ask for the remote is correct then your Maths are sound. You should have about 40W spare, so you are not running the PSU at full load
1. The batteries 'should' charge 80% faster
2. They dont get terribly warm from charging, you may notice a small difference.
3 All PSU's will get warm to a certain degree, they are not 100% efficient in converting voltages, so some of the energy is lost as heat. Does it have forced air cooling? At least you are only running it at 92% of it's rated power with that combo of controller and batteries and not 100% like our diddly DJI PSU's
Guys.. I do not know why while watching the video I made on my IPad does not show annotations I have made to correct information given (i.e the voltage difference from 26v not mattering ,which of course does in order to fully charge batteries) please watch it on a desktop or read full description and this thread orange you can tell me why i cannot see annotations on my iPad but I can on desktop??
Hi Genettico. Great post and vid. I need to sit down and watch it proply as you might have covered my question but I will ask anyway. Did you fully charge a battery pack as indicated by the lights going out on the pack top and if so any idea what the voltage was on the charged battery?
Moving away from what common sense says but I would have thought that although your power supply is rated at 24V you will still been able to charge the inspire battery fully.
Anyway of tweaking the power supply out put up a couple of volts?
Rockeyes Posted at 2015-4-16 05:22
Hi Genettico. Great post and vid. I need to sit down and watch it proply as you might have covered m ...
Yes... this power supply DOES allow you to adjust the output voltage... I have mine to match the DJI provided power supply. It does answer this on video. Also, it does charge up to 100% as verified with app and Multimeter. if I didnt change voltage (I actually tried it) it went up to 83% and would not go up from there!
see more details on first post.. but short answer? turn screw on BLUE box potentiometer with a flat head screwdriver clockwise until you reach desired voltage!
If you have access to an oscilloscope, put the leads across the output and have a look at how clean that 24+vdc is coming out of the PSU.
I've found that many cheap, high current output switchmode supplies can have fairly dirty DC output that the battery may not be happy with - a largish electrolytic capacitor across and after the PSU terminals and maybe a choke on the +ve side will help smooth it out if it's noisy.
You've got me thinking about setting a similar arrangement with a dc-dc booster to take a 12v dc feed for 'in field' battery charging. Plenty of options on ebay and similar for LED drivers that are adj constant voltage and current. Could always use an inverter and the stock DJI brick I know, but I'd like to fit something a bit neater into the vehicle or camping trailer.
From a brief scan of ebay, it looks to be possible to mock something up in a case with ventilation for $50-$60 AU.
If you have access to an oscilloscope, put the leads across the output ...
Oh boy do I.... So... as I type this I actually have a team of three (3) engineers on the field of electronics and all their very nice, very expensive toys looking at battery, and both power supplies... (The one I made and the one that came with the bird)... They not only have oscilloscopes, but a myriad of other equipment they use on a daily basis. Im soo excited.. They actually engineer and design such things for the company I work for, for so I cannot wait to see what they have to say...They are co-workers willing to put their expertise and time to help us all out... They will be testing galore and if needed make suggestions to improve power supply I made., and to point out defficiencies on provided power supply.
DJI AC ADAPTER:
Open circuit: 26.078V 44mVpp (ripple 1-File)
Charging: 25.7V 311 Mvpp (ripple 2-File)
2.3A down to 2.1A 210MVpp Ripple 6
Meind Adapter:
Open Circuit: 26.3V 124mVpp Ripple3
Charging: 26.0V 168mVpp ripple4
26.1V 191mVpp ripple5
2.4a down to 2.2a
So, as you can see the Meind is actually much more efficient than the DJI supplied. I made a quick video of my interaction with the guys and he replicated the test for us to see... but also gave me the files as well.... AWESOME!!
So... I do like your suggestion of the Ferrite Core choke, and since we had some in stock I gave it a whirl... It does not hurt.. and at $.83 it is a good idea to add to the leads.
My thanks go to these guys that dedicated a bit of their time to test this for all of us!
Thank you. I have already posted vids of the battery charging, ( http://youtu.be/oHEa4Y6XGVw .....however here is a video of my interaction with the engineers eariler today|
my next tests are for 3 tb48s at load and then 2 tb48s and one RC. This to see how this power supply handles it. Also, Im going to test charging speeds differences DJI and MEIND adapters and heat from both setups with a single battery and multiple ones on the MEIND adapter. As well noise variance with and without Ferrite cores between different charging loads for the Meind.
I now have added Ferrite Chokes to bring down the already low noise to under 86mVpp while charging.. On a single battery.
This is excellent work and information. Hats off to you guys. The stock DJI Psu is really very noisy under load. I am guessing they are using a lower value capacitor to try to smooth out the ripple voltage. This, combined with the charger demanding all the poor psu can spit out, harks of poor design or over zealous cost cutting or more likely, both. It really is the weakest link.
Thanks again for posting these findings.
Jason
Ph02on Posted at 2015-4-17 04:00
This is excellent work and information. Hats off to you guys. The stock DJI Psu is really very noi ...
My pleasure... I have a great group of guys I work with, and they were very willing to lend a hand to determine if my choice of PSU was/is adequate enough for our intentions.
Genettico you have taken a great deal of time doing this, it's very helpful. There is a lot of information above to read
If you don't mind would you please give a final conclusion listing your thoughts, parts required, I know some of this information is listed above but if it could be crammed into one post would be a great tool for all users on the forum.
Thanks again to you and the team you work with to go through this exercise
I concur - the team has done a great job - the graphs and figures don't lie!
When considering alternative products and solutions, its so very important to look beyond the printed specs on labels and packaging and actually measure performance definitively.
Here we have REAL data from PROPERLY CALIBRATED instruments from measurements taken by qualified persons - proper engineering practice!
And better yet, it is all presented in a professional and collaborative manner by someone who's interests lie in supporting the I1 users community - You are to be commended Genettico! - I don't know what part of the world you call home, but I'll raise a glass to you in thanks!
Exib Posted at 2015-4-17 05:35
Genettico you have taken a great deal of time doing this, it's very helpful. There is a lot of infor ...
Thank you.. I have indeed dedicated lots of time on research to come up with a solution to our charging needs.... Im glad I can finally put to rest claims,speculations and reasonable doubts we all had but that without the right equipment and knowledge on how to use it efficiently and know how to read results it is difficult to prove... I have been doing lots of R&D, And I really DO HOPE like you that other people can appreciate all the effort, time and resources spent on this by me for weeks now and today by 3 engineers at my company willing to just help the community! ... Yes.. I will put final thoughts videos pics and results as soon as I complete last tests..
I concur - the team has done a great job - the graphs and figures don' ...
Thank you... I have been working on this for weeks now.. and I appreciate people like you noticing all the time and effort that went into it! I brought the power supply to my workplace today, and luckily for me I happen to work in a high tech company full of engineers and capable hands willing to help and loan their experience. I wanted for them to test and criticize my setup and suggest anything they thought pertinent..I also listened to input from folks like you and determine if it is worth exploring or not... And then test and test.. Btw your suggestion of the chokes was implemented though not needed as the PS actually provides very clean power. Anyways... we all carved sometime during lunch and breaks to test in much more detail I can at home.
I call home Lexington SC, USA.... Again.. Thank you., stay tuned for final test results, notes, pics, video and conclusion
Big thumbs up from me mate that's some very nice work. Looking forward to further updates . I'm still waiting for my parts to arrive and so glad you are achieving what we set out to do.
Thank you all for all the comments of encouragement, feedback, appreciation and interest.
I have spent a ridiculous amount of time producing these lasts tests... however I am happy to share the results. The PNG below shows the testing for charging time durations-temperatures-and voltages.
Here is a video showing the test (35 seconds Timelapse over 70 minutes. I started with all batteries at 22.8V or 34%:
DJK Posted at 2015-4-18 10:17
Looks like they are 4.35 volt cells, and you reduced charging time 20 minutes while charging three ...
Actual difference in time was 23.25minutes for this last test from 22.8v (which shows as 35% on APP when the bird was on. The difference in percentage is the same for the tb47's and the tb48's... Whether I charge 1 or 3, though I would not just load 1. A few times I got over Amp measurements when charging a single battery vs 3, and 2 times the battery went on to over amped mode. The time saved increases the more the battery is drained, but this is only a reflection of the current charge held at moment of charging.however the percentage gained does not change significantly. The gain in faster charging rates Is around 30% (+-1.5%) over the whole charging time. I have tested all the way from batteries being at 15%. I have also tested a single battery pack or group for both, TB47's and TB48's. The larger variance is about 33% faster when I checked charging from 15% (battery percentage). The greatest temperature variance is of about 6 degrees fahrenheit on all my tests ( +- 1degree).
DJK Posted at 2015-4-18 10:17
Looks like they are 4.35 volt cells, and you reduced charging time 20 minutes while charging three ...
Actual difference in time was 23.25minutes for this last test from 22.8v (which shows as 35% on APP when the bird was on. The difference in percentage is the same for the tb47's and the tb48's... Whether I charge 1 or 3, though I would not just load 1. A few times I got over Amp measurements when charging a single battery vs 3, and 2 times the battery went on to over amped mode. The time saved increases the more the battery is drained, but this is only a reflection of the current charge held at moment of charging.however the percentage gained does not change significantly. The gain in faster charging rates Is around 30% (+-1.5%) over the whole charging time. I have tested all the way from batteries being at 15%. I have also tested a single battery pack or group for both, TB47's and TB48's. The larger variance is about 33% faster when I checked charging from 15% (battery percentage). The greatest temperature variance is of about 6 degrees fahrenheit on all my tests ( +- 1degree).
Also, the cells are actually 4.33v. This as result of dividing 26.01v (total voltage at end of charge cycle) divided by the 6 cells.
See the videos I posted on first post (updated) for more details.. Thanks
Nice work Genettico, those charge rates are even better than I thought possible. I knew DJI chose the underpowered power supply and that it works but barely, I am guessing the reason they elected to use it was for the portability and size of the the unit, it must have been a compromise? Did you experience any troubles with heat in the pack when you pushed the voltage?
There are many very fine power supplies at Radioworld and other electronic outlets, I wonder how they would stack up to the one you created in cost vs. Performance. I'm assuming you are looking at suitable alternatives given the lack of availability of this power supply?
Again super informative and very professional, I look forward to more information like this.
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. I'm still waiting for my parts to arrive and so glad you are achieving what we set out to do. 
