 What's up guys welcome rotor riot and welcome back to learn to FPV today. It's going to be all about batteries So I'm going to run down the different specs that you're going to see on batteries and explain what they mean I'm going to give you a few considerations to look at when choosing the right battery and give you just some general safety and good practice tips So lipo or lithium polymer batteries come in a wide range of shapes and sizes and voltages So all the way down from this little tiny one-ass battery that be used for a micro up to these huge 6s 5000 batteries that I run in my helicopters or my electric skateboard But across all these batteries. They all have the same list of specs that you're going to find on them So the different specs that come on batteries are the voltage of the battery or how many cells are in it the capacity The C rating what type of connector it comes with if any at all I think most batteries these days do come with a connector and the dimensions in the weight So how big is it? How long is it? How wide is it? How much is it way? So for voltage remember that every lipo battery is going to have each of its cells range from 3.7 at dead to 4.2 at full voltage So the voltage you're going to find on the battery is I think storage voltage Which is 3.8 times however many cells are in it So like for example a 6s battery. It's going to say 22.2 volts if it was fully charged It'd be a little more fully dead a little low, but the voltage you'll see is the nominal voltage So for those of you that don't really understand the difference between the capacity and the voltage and what all that means I'm not really an electronics expert, but the way it's been explained to me is think of electricity like water So picture like a fire hose your capacity is like how much water is in the tank that you can shoot out the hose And then the voltage is how intensely are you shooting it out the hose? So if you're like tighten the nozzle down, it's shooting out really hard That's like high voltage if it was just barely kind of dribbling out at the end That's low voltage you could still have the same amount of capacity in the tank that's going to come out But at what intensity is it going to come out? So generally higher voltage more overall power So speaking of capacity like I just mentioned the capacity is essentially how much water you have in the tank Do you have a 5 gallon tank? Do you got a 50 gallon tank? It's basically the same concept So if it's a 5,000 milliamp battery like this one, it's gonna be a lot bigger than a 1,000 milliamp like this one So these are both 6 cell batteries or 22.2 volt batteries But obviously the 5,000 is a lot bigger because it just has a lot more juice in it Next up we have C rating C rating is a little tricky because it is important, but it's also kind of to be taken with a grain of salt Unfortunately in the battery industry it's kind of widely known that there's a bit of dishonesty going on so Before I get to that, let me just explain what C rating is So this battery has a C rating of a hundred C So the battery is claiming it can constantly push out a hundred times its capacity. So in this case that would be 100 amps continuous and I think we all generally know that that's not really going to happen At least not and have the battery actually last any amount of time If I were to continuously pull a hundred amps steady out of this for its whole battery life I'm only going to get a few cycles doing that for the batteries bad if it can even actually maintain that so Current flight controllers usually have current sensors in them And you can tell just doing a punch out that you might be able to hit a hundred amps But it's gonna quickly drop down the voltage will sag your overall power goes down. It can't really sustain that So why why is it dishonest? Why do they fudge the numbers? well It's it kind of became like an arms race So that if the competition's battery is a 40c battery Well, like mine's a 45c battery and then they say oh yours is 45 mines 50c And we just keep working up and up and get higher and higher and more and more ridiculous numbers it could also be that The tests that they ran really did give those numbers But they just changed the specs of their tests so that it's a true test But maybe this company is saying ours is 40c But the battery is never allowed to go over a certain temperature and it needs to get X amount of cycles Whereas maybe this company is saying well We don't care how long it sustains it as long as it sustains it for a short amount of time And maybe the batteries totally toast after that We'll call that good enough and ours is a hundred c battery. It could be a little tricky I guess the main thing I would tell you is you can't just blindly Look and say which everyone has the highest c rating. That's the most powerful battery. That's the one I'm gonna go for It's not that easy. I would say what's more important than the highest c rating is going with a brand of battery That's trusted well known and used by a lot of people That will give you a better odds of actually getting a high performance battery because there's nothing to stop anybody from Creating a battery company ordering batteries from China putting their own labels on them that say 200c and here you go Have that at buy them. It doesn't mean that that battery is actually any better Now we're where I will say it does make a difference and where you should be looking at c rating is Within that same brand that is trusted. They're gonna have a range So if brand X everyone knows they make good batteries if they have a 40c battery and a 80c battery I will go with the 80c battery if it's in your price range and it works for your needs It probably is going to be a better battery Just know that just because there's a number on a label doesn't necessarily mean that in the real world It's actually going to perform that well I would go more on Reputation and what's been tested out so another spec to look at is the connector It's important to know which kind of connector your battery is going to have it So it'll work with the drone that you have you can always switch this out But it's just good to know and it seems like nowadays pretty much any battery that I ever see they have connectors When I first got into RC they would usually come bare and you'd have to choose your own anyways It's just good to know if the battery that you're looking at doesn't have the right connector Maybe see if there's something very similar that does or just know that you're gonna have to change it Okay, so here's some things that you're gonna need to consider when you're picking the right battery First off what size drone are you flying because obviously if you're flying a tiny little micro a huge battery like this That's not gonna work So a lot of people when they first get into the hobby They realize that things that fly especially drones or helicopters things that don't have a wing are much less efficient They don't really get a lot of flight time So people always kind of have this similar thought well I'll just get a really huge battery and it'll give me tons of flight time But it doesn't really work exactly like that because the bigger battery you put on it now It's heavier now it requires more power to fly so there's diminishing returns there It's not going to perform as well, and it's just going to pull more amps to haul that extra weight So in every size of drone there's kind of an optimal Range of weight that that drone is going to want to carry another thing to think about is your prop choice Normally your prop choice is going to be an afterthought to the battery I would say the battery is a more key component in the whole overall system and Props are cheap. So if you the reason why it's important is because Depending on the motor in the battery choice you make some props are going to be better some props are going to be worse So you you don't always want to run the most aggressive high-pitched biggest prop you can to get the most power Sometimes you can hit past the point of diminishing returns where it's pulling so many amps and Just the components can't even actually handle the full potential power that that setup could make and Depending on your style, maybe you're not looking for the most absolutely powerful setup Maybe you want something flies a long time, so that's going to require a different prop so We'll get into prop choices on the prop episode, but once again props are cheap It's a lot easier to experiment and find the right prop And then it is to be dead set on a prop and then buying different batteries that go well with that prop So it's just something to think about another really big one to think about is what motors you're going to pick So this could kind of go either way you could start off knowing that you want a certain motor and then find a Battery that's going to match that well or you may start off knowing that you want to run a certain Battery and then find a motor that's going to go with that. Well But it's really important to pair these up correctly. You don't want to be spinning that motor way too fast pulling too much power Making it hard on the system You don't want it to be spinning way too slow and not giving you the right power that you should have another consideration to make is and once again this can go either way you could start with the battery or start with the electronics So with your electronics, you need to understand what the input voltage capability is So if I were to plug a 6s battery into a little micro quad that all the electronics are only rated for a 3s battery It's going to go poof and smoke You need to make sure that all your electronics are going to be able to handle the voltage you're feeding it Or at least the main point of contact where the battery goes You'll probably have some kind of voltage regulation on board to take whatever voltage that you're starting with and drop it down To what the other components need like your FPV gear, but it's definitely important Understand all the voltage capabilities of all the electronics on your drone before picking a battery Or start with the battery and then pick electronic components that are going to work with that battery Another thing I kind of already touched on but it's really important is the brand trust of a battery manufacturer there's tons of different brands out there, but there's really only a handful that Most people in the hobby are going to trust and go with their batteries You don't want to just buy some random brand battery That's way cheaper than everybody else because you're most likely going to find that that battery does not perform very well And it doesn't last very long So if you were to keep buying those you're not going to have as good performing of a drone And you're going to spend more in the long run because instead of getting a couple hundred cycles out of a battery You're going to get a couple of tens of cycles out of a battery and buy another one So along with knowing that you can actually trust the specs that are on the label at least to a fair extent And also knowing that it's going to be a fairly well performing battery Try to stick with brands are well trusted. How can you know that? Well, if you're online and you're on forums you're on Facebook groups You can ask around what people really like for batteries or just go to some of the more well respected shops And they're generally not going to carry Really crap batteries So pretty much any brand that you're going to see on our store race day quads get FPV Those are brands of batteries that we trust if you find some brand that you don't see at any of those stores But it's over here somewhere else on the internet and it's way cheaper By all means give it a shot, but it's probably not going to be as good of a battery. So if it's I would just go for Just try to go for a well respected battery So related to that is the price of the batteries This can be a little tricky. It's not as simple and straightforward as it seems The most expensive battery out there is not necessarily always the top performing battery And sometimes a cheaper battery performs pretty good, but a little bit cheaper than that is garbage. It's like It's really tough to give you an exact idea What price points you should be looking at and what are the right batteries? It really just comes down to People's experience and a brand's reputation. So I guess in general, I wouldn't recommend getting the most expensive battery Or the cheapest battery you can find. I would probably recommend at least for starting go with the middle of the road price battery That you've at least heard of a few times. You know has a fairly good reputation Now you could experiment maybe by the more expensive battery and then by the really cheap battery And then flying back to back and flying for a while because another thing about batteries is they degrade over time And not always at the same rate. You may find that Battery a it seems like it's got more punch. It's more power. I'm getting more flight time than battery b But a month later that kind of shifts. Maybe battery b's Gets more cycles out of it and battery a's after a month or two. It's kind of starting to die And it's really hard to tell you which ones are going to do that, which ones aren't at the end of the day These are all Not going to be exactly the same every single battery. It's a it's a chemical process They make a ton of them. They make batches of them and they send them out It's it's not exactly going to be every single one of this battery is exactly the same every single time Or any other battery you get better batches. You get worse batches things change so Batteries can be a little tricky in that way. Okay, and lastly a couple good practices and safety tips So number one Do not fly your drone until it will no longer take off This is a super common beginner mistake because maybe they had rc cars that work this way or they just don't know You do not want to drain a battery completely. That's not how lithium polymer batteries are meant to work so The general rule is you use 80 percent of that battery Depending on your setup. This can be difficult to know The old school way of doing this is on your radio. You can usually set up a timer So let's say you set up a timer for like two minutes You fly the battery and then you charge it just about every charger can tell you how many milliamps you've put back So then you just do the math So this is a 1000 milliamp battery I want to pull 800 milliamps out of that So when I charge it after flying for two minutes if I've only put 600 back That means I can fly it at about the same type of flying for a little bit longer So I'll go to two and a half minutes repeat that A lot of the current flight controllers have on-screen display So they can tell you how many milliamps you pulled through it and they can tell you what your voltage is at So the most common way that most people do this is they know what their end voltage should be to land And speaking of that you have you have to also take into account that while the drone's still in the air There's a load on the battery So your voltage is going to be a little bit lower than two minutes after you've landed it and let it rest But once again main tip do not just keep flying until the drone doesn't fly anymore come up with either a timer Or on-screen display or some type of system to know that you're not over discharging that battery Another one is leave your batteries at a storage charge if you're not going to fly it within the next couple days This isn't going to immediately cause a huge problem And the battery is just going to blow up out of nowhere or be totally dead But it's just not good for it You're going to you're going to degrade the battery and not give as many cycles out of it if you're Very often or even just a few times leaving it fully charged and just sitting there for weeks and weeks or months It's not good for the battery. So If you charge up a bunch of batteries and you didn't get to fly them all and you don't think you're going to fly for a while There's a bunch of different methods for discharging batteries We did a video on this somewhere safe somewhere not But you can use your charger to discharge it. There's different products made to discharge batteries You could even just put it on the quad and hover it in the backyard to discharge it down But once again, don't leave your batteries charged for an extended period of time And lastly, if you can try to store your batteries in a safe place I'm kind of guilty of not doing this at times. I try to keep them at least somewhat where I could get to them but You're generally not going to have a lot of problems like they don't usually just spontaneously combust out of nowhere But you just need to be prepared that if you did have a problem with your batteries What are they close to? Are they in your bedroom with you? Are you going to burn the house down? So it may seem like excessive to keep them out in the garage or Somewhere safe But if you can keep them like in some kind of contained box where the fire won't at least quickly spread out So I'd say at least just do your best that if anything were to happen You can at least get to them quickly get them outside get them somewhere where it's not going to burn the house down Okay, so that's it for the basics on batteries. If you guys have any more questions Definitely leave them down in the comments below and I'll be there to answer you Thanks for watching and this has been learned to FPV