HITEC X4 PLUS LIMITATIONS

[WernerJB]

I have the above charger and while it is working fine in charging and balancing my batteries it has a serious problem with putting them into storage mode as it has a limitation of drawing maximal 1 Amp from the batteries. So putting a fully charged battery into storage mode takes more than a day and many restarts. This limitation was confirmed by HITEC.
So I will dump this charger and now I'm searching for a new one who has a better performance. Any ideas which charger would be better?

 

[Eagle's Eye Video]

I have the above charge and while it is working fine in charging and balancing my batteries it has a serious problem with putting them into storage mode as it has a limitation of drawing maximal 1 Amp from the batteries. So putting a fully charged battery into storage mode takes more than a day and many restarts. This limitation was confirmed by HITEC.
So I will dump this charger and now I'm searching for a new one who has a better performance. Any ideas which charger would be better?

Storage discharging is always going to be a much longer process than charging. Rather than dumping a quality charger, why not look into the alternatives for bringing down your battery voltage? Using a 12V halogen or auto headlight to drain the battery is one method... as well as simply flying down the voltage of unused batteries.

 

[WernerJB]

Thanks for the reply and while I appreciate your suggestion but this was exactly I was trying to avoid when purchasing this unit. Connecting a car bulb or another bulb assembly is just not what I want to deal with, and flying 5 batteries down just to empty them is time consuming and surely shortens the life of the drone. So still looking for suggestions.

 

[PatR]

I’ll have to look up and review the user manual for the X4 but are you sure the discharge levels are not adjustable in the system settings?

 

[WernerJB]

Yes. It was confirmed by Hitec Technical Support.

 

[Eagle's Eye Video]

When confirmed by Hitec, did they give an alternate solution?

I only have experience with 2 chargers a EV-Peak DY3 and later a HiTec X2 AC... but in both cases, discharging would consistently be 4 - 6 times the length of time of charging same batteries from that same storage voltage level.

Everything I have ever seen on this board and elsewhere, has indicated the best practice to be to use batteries within 48 hours (ideally 24 hours or less) of charging, and to discharge back to a storage voltage within that same 48 hr/24 hr ideal timeframe.

It is a pain to discharge these batteries down and you are equally shortening the life of your batteries... the chemical processes do not distinguish between a flight cycle or a charger storage discharge cycle. However I have serious doubts that different chargers have that great a variance in discharge rate, for fire safety reasons inherent with LiPos.

 

[PatR]

The X4 manual appears to contradict what the tech support rep is supposed to have said. It does state the rate cannot exceed 1C, not 1A though.

https://hitecrcd.com/images/products/pdf/208_X4ACPlus_Manual-RSize.pdf

Since we don’t need to connect a battery to make system adjustments, select a charging port and start working with the buttons to get to settings or set up for a battery chemistry and voltage. Then work through the system until teaching the point where the discharge load can be modified to match the battery capacity in amps. I’m fairly certain that can be done with the X4 as the instructions/flow chart are virtually the same as the X2. A 1C discharge rate is both common and safe.

 

[Sureshot]

I use my HTRC C240 DUO charger only for charging and have a dedicated discharger for those times I didn't use a charged battery.
It's the one that has a 150 watt load using (3) 50w halogen bulbs.
eBay search "lipo discharger 150w"