My battery connectors are a pain.  Hard to connect and hard to disconnect.  Does anybody make an adapter you can stick in the middle between the battery and the Phantom that has a on/off switch so you wouldn't have to fumble with the connectors so much?

I thought about rigging up some kind of Y connector with a switch.  The idea being that there would be a second battery external that could be used solely while the Phantom is going through the start up sequence and after it's got a good GPS lock and Home lock the external battery is disconnected and the Internal battery would have more juice available for flying.

In theory a switch would work but in practice it would need to be quite substantial to handle the continuous high current draw when the craft is in flight without overheating.

@Buddahbelly.  Adding a second battery is a false economy. The Phantom only uses a few mAh during its initialisation and would use a lot more energy to compensate for the weight of the extra battery when in flight.

Regards

Nidge

nig_smith@o2.co Posted at 2015-5-5 18:55
In theory a switch would work but in practice it would need to be quite substantial to handle the co ...

I thought he was saying the second battery is used ONLY while the Phantom is going through the start up sequence, then disconnected.  Just curious, anybody ever figured out how much of the battery life gets used up while you're waiting for  the GPS/home lock?

our0borus Posted at 2015-5-6 02:39
I thought he was saying the second battery is used ONLY while the Phantom is going through the sta ...

I can't quote figures for the Phantom but today I did a test with my F550 using the FrSky current sensor.
On my F550 I have installed and running off the flight battery:
Zenmuse Gimbal.
GoPro.Hero 3Black
ImmersionRC 250mW vTX.
Datalink Groundstation Air component

After initial power up there was about 40 seconds before a full 3D GPS lock was obtained and for this period there was only a draw of 9mA or 0.009A from the 3s flight battery. This would roughly equate to 0.001 seconds of flight time saved if you used a separate battery just for the GPS acquisition period.

It's also worth pointing out that the 40 seconds needed for GPS aquisition was because the internal GPS almanac needed updating, subsequent GPS acquisitions when changing the flight battery was about 10 seconds or less.

Regards

Nidge