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TB50 Car Charger?
- Thread starter seattlenativemike
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There is not such thing in existence. The only way to charge TB50 in car is to get a minimum 350W (preferrably pure sine) inverter and hardwire it to the car battery or an auxiliary battery. You would also need a DC-DC charger for the auxiliary battery etc etc. Doing such installations may void your car warranty.
The other option and a "non invasive" alternative is to get a big powerstation such as the Bluetti EB 150 or simillar and plug your DJI TB50 charger to 120V/240V outlet on the powerstation while driving.
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It exists. I used to have two of them
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Basically concur with mmarian. If possible do not mess with trying to use your car battery. Several years ago I set up a recharge deal on our VW Eurovan Camper. It has a 'deep cycle' battery that is separate from the starter battery (charges when the engine is running or plugged into a campground outlet). I installed a Jupiter 1000/2000w two 120 plug inverter (Harbor Freight). I am able to use TWO Inspire 2 chargers at the same time. I can charge for about 30 min (both chargers running) without the engine running. When the battery gets a bit low, the inverter screams at me. I simply start the engine to push juice into the battery. On any job that I have done (all day) I NEVER have run out of flight batteries. They charge just as fast as if plugged into the wall. One note, it is critical that you connect the inverter to the battery with heavy wire (2/0). I admit I was a bit nervous at first that the inverter would damage my batteries, but have never had any issues. Been doing this on my full day projects (and sometimes for a week) with ZERO issues AND never have waited for a battery to finish (I have 4 sets total). Totally great to not waste time looking for a plugin. (And if you are driving between sites, you will always have your batteries ready to go.)
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You have proven me wrong then. Well almost. The status of this product on the link says not available and not knowing when it will be. I guess it was not very popular. To me this is a bit of a joke and I would never recommend it or use it myself. In my estimate it would take about 3 hrs to charge 2 batteries one by one and the car engine would have to be running all that time. You would not be able to use two of these chargers at the same time in one car even if the car had two 12V sockets due to limit of draw from such sockets, usually max 10A combined. And lastly, charging LiPo batteries is quite complex process if to be done right and not damaging the batteries. The I2 batteries are too expensive to risk or trust a third party product such as this one to do it right.
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The Penivo charger reminds me of the DJI Mavic power plug charger. It simply is too lightweight to do the job. You are correct regarding the I2 batteries. Do not mess around with any charger that is using the power plug. The worst thing you can do for a battery is to have a charger that toggles on and off (and then blows a fuse). The best thing is to take your endeavor seriously and do it right. The best thing is to study how to install a dual battery setup. One battery is dedicated to your starter, and the other is a deep cycle battery that is dedicated to an inverter (min 500W) (that is able to be charged with your engine running). Inverters are not expensive, but you cannot expect a normal wire, power plug setup to work. The danger you get into is if you don’t pay attention to your wattage, the possibility of blowing a fuse in your car is likely. For example, a car power plug fuse has 15 Amps (most cars use a 12V system), you take 15 and multiply it by 12 and you get 180 Watts (which is your safety zone). If you happen to surpass that 180 Watt ceiling, then your fuse will blow. To run an inverter for the I2 batteries demands a min of 350W.
In Australia the 12V car socket has usually 10A fuse, so the max draw is limited to 120W. As we both already said, do it right with secondary battery, inverter, dc-dc charger etc or forget it. This plug charger is a joke.
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It doesn't exist. I had to build one.
This unit is for Mavic Pro batteries, P4P batteries and Inspire 1 batteries (TB47/TB48), but will also work with the TB50's.
Because it pulls a lot of current, it connects directly to the car's battery. I can charge 3 or 4 batteries before the need to start the engine to replenish the car battery. At idle, I can charge batteries all day via my Honda CRV or Mini Cooper.
D
You guys know DJI makes a car charger for the charging hub right?
m.dji.com
Buy Inspire 2 Car Charger - DJI Store
Shop for Inspire 2 Car Charger on the official DJI Online Store. Find great deals and buy DJI products online with quick and convenient delivery!
m.dji.com
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I honestly did not know that. It has output limited to 90W obviously not to overload the 12V car outlet. That is roughly half of what the charger draws when connected to normal home wall power socket hence the 2 1/2 hr charging time needed to charge 2 batteries. Good to know it exists anyway!You guys know DJI makes a car charger for the charging hub right?
Buy Inspire 2 Car Charger - DJI Store
Shop for Inspire 2 Car Charger on the official DJI Online Store. Find great deals and buy DJI products online with quick and convenient delivery!
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2.5 hours to charge 2 batteries. All but useless in my book.You guys know DJI makes a car charger for the charging hub right?
Buy Inspire 2 Car Charger - DJI Store
Shop for Inspire 2 Car Charger on the official DJI Online Store. Find great deals and buy DJI products online with quick and convenient delivery!
I generally charge my P4P and TB47/48/50 batteries at 100 watts each. So that's 300 watts total draw for 3 batteries with my charger. But I can easily step it up to 180 per channel ("quick charge" current), for a total of 540 watts. Each of my chargers (power supplies really) are rated to 900 watts each, so I'm well within spec. At this point, the weak link in my chain is my battery cable clips. They do get warm when pulling 300 watts, so I'm hesitant to pull more than that. But each charger's output current is a user setting that can be set in seconds. So, for instance, I can set one charger for 150 watts and another for 90 watts and another for 100 watts or whatever I choose. I can also change the charging voltage, so I can charge 3S 4S 5S 6S, etc. without a problem.
Worth noting, as the batteries reach the 85-90% charge point, current draw tapers off. So, using basic math one can easily control how much one taxes one's car battery. And since I have a digital voltage meter connected to my vehicle, I can monitor the car's voltage to make sure all is good. It's a good system, but far from idiot-proof.
D
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Yea no question it’s about 50% slower than the wall charger but I guess for me personally I don’t want to be going in and messing with my car battery on a regular basis and really don’t want to worry about something like that catching on fire.
If I needed faster charging I would probably get one or a couple of these mobile power station things and that way you don’t even need a car to charge. Is something like this all that more expensive than all the parts you would need to make the thing you’ve made?
www.harborfreight.com
www.harborfreight.com
If I needed faster charging I would probably get one or a couple of these mobile power station things and that way you don’t even need a car to charge. Is something like this all that more expensive than all the parts you would need to make the thing you’ve made?
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It's a simple matter of connecting clips to your car battery. The only fire hazard that I imagine could arise would be from over-current to your DJI batteries. The LiPo's are the most volatile link in the chain. Even if you connected the clips backwards, I believe the charge units are protected against that scenario. I would have to double check.
Even a full car battery can only charge 3 or 4 drone batteries before dropping voltage so low that you can't start your car. If I were allowed to deplete the car battery completely, I imagine I may be able to charge 5 or 6 batteries. But I can't imagine going much beyond that. And we all know that in the battery game bigger is better. So any mobile charging units would charge less on a linear scale. If one halves the source battery's size and weight, the result is half the ability to charge drone batteries.
The problem I wanted to solve was pretty simple. If I have a mapping job out in the middle of nowhere that requires I fly my drone all day, how do I accomplish this without bringing 40 batteries or 8 car batteries? I looked into converters, but it made no sense to me to convert DC to AC and then back to DC again. This process generates a lot of heat, which translates to inefficiency. So why not take advantage of the car's DC system and charge DC directly to DC? While this process DOES generate SOME heat, it's not nearly as much as the DC->AC->DC conversions. And why not take advantage of the car's 90 amp alternator? With my charging system, I can slow charge (100 watts) P4P batteries all day with nary an issue.
I think I figured out that if I have 5 batteries, I can cycle them all day long without having to take a break from flying. So I usually bring 8 batteries to my bigger jobs. I haven't had to do this kind of perpetual battery cycling with my Inspire 1 batteries, but the math looks good that I should be able to with no problem.
So, as you can see, the mobile charges you linked to wouldn't solve my problem.
I have less than 200 bucks into my charger. Dare I say, less than 150 bucks? I forget what I paid for the power supplies, but I believe it was < 50 bucks each....maybe < 40. I'd have to look.
D
To avoid going DC-AC-DC wouldn't something like this be enough to be able to use car battery and standard DJI charger to charge I2 batteries, provided the engine is idling during charging to prevent depleting the car battery?
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Yes and no....sort of...
Inspire 1 battery charging voltage is 26.3VDC. So your 27VDC boost converter *could* work for the Inspire 1 batteries. The problem would be controlling (limiting) the current. 10 amps is 270 watts, which would surely do damage to the Inspire 1 battery. DJI's "quick charge" is 180 watts. Increasing that by 50% would be a bad plan.
Phantom 4 Pro battery charging voltage is much less; 17.4VDC. So in this scenario you would have to step down the voltage after stepping it up. And there's that amperage issue again.
And finally, the Mavic Pro battery charging voltage is a mere 13.1VDC. You could probably charge directly off the car battery, but again "amperage" becomes an issue.
Left to their own devices, the DJI batteries will suck in as much current as you feed them. So you have to limit the current so they don't overcharge themselves. This is why I used the adjustable boost converters. Not only can I control the output current, but I can also control the voltage. It's a simple matter of changing the settings and the dongle to accommodate any given battery in my arsenal. With the correct dongle, I could even charge remote controls and other peripherals. But I haven't needed to do that yet.
D
Are you sure that the DJI batteries will suck as much current as you feed them even when they are connected and charged by the Inspire 2 DJI charging hub? I thought that it is regulating and controlling the entire charging process including the charging current and voltage. Perhaps balancing of individual cells to the exact same voltage might be done inside of the smart battery itself? The DJI power supply output of the Inspire 2 smart charger is 26.1V and 6.9Amp according to the label on the power supply. By connecting the charging hub to a power supply capable of 10Amp to me does not necessarily mean that the hub will feed that 10Amp to the batteries, or will it? And 27V instead of 26.1V should hopefully not damage the charging hub or the batteries either. I am just throwing this out there and stand to be proven wrong. But if it would work, that could be a perfect and inexpensive solution for car charging of I2 batteries in the DJI charging hub.
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The Inspire 1 charging hub only sources 100 watts per channel x6. I can't speak for the Inspire 2 Charging Hub. Charging Hub aside, yes, the batteries will probably take up to 300 watts or more if you source that much current. I can experiment, but honestly don't want to damage my batteries. I CAN say with 100% certainty when I up the current to 180 watts, the Inspire 1 batteries are very happy to take it. I honestly don't know what their upper limit is, but I would guess it's far beyond spec. of 180 watts.
The Hub, yes. But we're talking about my homemade DC charger, not the DJI charging hub (which I use at home exclusively to charge my TB47 and TB48 batteries.
Yes, it is.
So doing some simple math, that's 180 watts, which aligns with what I have been saying all along. The TB50's are essentially TB48's with a slightly different form factor. Electrically speaking, they're identical.
No. Each channel is limited to 180 watts, which is 1080 watts total (assuming 6 channels), which is about 9 amps total at the AC plug.
You're confusing AC with DC. The DJI charging hub is an AC device that plugs into the wall and converts AC to DC. The batteries are DC devices. So...unless we're getting our wires crossed, I assume you are referring to the DJI charger that plugs into a typical wall socket. Correct?
You're not wrong, per-se. But I assume the DJI hub for the Inspire 2 is similar the charging hub for the Inspire 1. It would help if you shared a link to which charger you are talking about.
Not from a car battery.
D
The I2 charger consists of two parts. The 180W Powersupply with DC output of 26.1V (they call it Charger but it is only a power supply). This is connected to Charging Hub ( a charger in effect) which holds 4 batteries, charging 2 at the time. What I had in mind by this step up 12V to 27V/10Amp DC unit was to connect it on the imput side to car starting battery (with engine idling during charging) and the 27V/10Amp DC output directly to the charging hub. Basicaly replacing the 180W powersuply. Is there a reason why this should not work?
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