Help! I need another charger and have a couple questions about power supplys.

[scarface]

Hi, to everyone who remembers me. I don't fly anymore (but I will fly sometime again it's just I have other projects going on right now and they take all my money) but I still need my charger for things every once in awhile and I "lost" the one I had, so I am gonna take this chance and get a better charger than what I had. I had the thunder AC6.

I would buy a icharger right now but I need a power supply. I don't want to buy one because I don't want this to go over 125$. I have a old computer (like around 2005) that is just junk now, can I use a power supply from that and if so what will I need to change on it for it to work with my charger.

Thanks for the help.

 

[joshgluck]

What are the power input requirements for the charger you are looking at getting? 12v or 24v? How many watts? This will help determine if your 2005 computer supply will work. As to how to make it work, that depends on its make and model. It's probably a 450w desktop switching supply with 5v and 12v output from a Dell or hp, right? If so post the make and model and then we can figure out how to trick it into sending the 12v out by fooling it into think there is a motherboard connected.

I too didn't want to buy a ps after dropping all that cash on a power lab8. What I did was take too dell 750w server power supplies and after some magic wired them in series for 24v output.

If you throw up some more info I'll see what I can do to help.

Thanks!

 

[scarface]

It's an HP, thats all I really know I can go pull out the power supply if that can tell you anything.

 

[joshgluck]

It will help because someone else has figured out what jumpers to short so will need the model number.

I also wonder what you plan to charge. There has been a debate about one bug charger vs a few small ones especially for field charging. The pro of one big one is massive parallel charging the down side though is you have to charge the same pack type. I wound up going with 3 accucel6 chargers and one power lab 8.

 

[scarface]

Is this what you need?

 

[scarface]

Oh and I just charge from my house so I would just need one bigger charger which is what I plan to do. ( not a big one but medium size one) I was actually gonna charge an airsoft gun battery but I don't have my charger.

 

[joshgluck]

So what size packs do you plan to charge? If you are doing 12v at 300w you need to figure out the voltage, number of cells, figure if you want to charge at 1c or more and the capacity of the battery. You should be fine if are charging nimh or smaller lipos packs. At that point though why not get a cheaper 30$ charger?

 

[scarface]

Why do I need to figure out what size battery's I wanna charge? All I need help with is getting this power supply from my computer to be able to charge a charger like the icharger 206B which is 20A max 300W and charge 1-6 lipo.

Main reason to not get a 50$ charger again is because I would like to have 20amp charge instead of only haveing 5amp charge and only be able to charge a 2200 pack at about 2c, when it would be nice if I could charge at 5c. Or charge a few packs at 1c if I'm not in a rush.

So I guess I should pull the power supply out of the computer, but then what do I do?

 

[Ohio AV8TOR]

Why do I need to figure out what size battery's I wanna charge? All I need help with is getting this power supply from my computer to be able to charge a charger like the icharger 206B which is 20A max 300W and charge 1-6 lipo.

Main reason to not get a 50$ charger again is because I would like to have 20amp charge instead of only haveing 5amp charge and only be able to charge a 2200 pack at about 2c, when it would be nice if I could charge at 5c. Or charge a few packs at 1c if I'm not in a rush.

So I guess I should pull the power supply out of the computer, but then what do I do?

Simply answered you need to know your battery size because you need to know what charge rate you plan on charging. You can't charge at 20A with a 5A power supply and it gets worse with 4 cells and above because the battery voltage exceeds the input voltage. Play around with this calculator and you will see the relationship.

Buy something like this Its 44.5A @ 12V.

 

[joshgluck]

Well said. Also your ps is rated at 19amps and only 260w for 12v according to the face plate. Just don't want to see you spend a ton on a charger and be unable to use it. For my pl8 I have dual servers power supplies that we were throwing away at work. Know anyone who works in IT?

As for the one you have: You should pull it out and good the model number to see what wires you need to short to gnd to determine how to get the ps to send +12v. I you might not be able to charge as many packs in parallel as you want but it's free and will charge something at some rate of C.

On my phone now. I'll take a look today and post my findings.