Quote:
Originally Posted by Pdelcast
Jeff,
You have to realize what we (as a company) are up against. There are battery manufacturers that sell batteries we would rate at 15C, but they label them as 35C. And then there are other companies who sell batteries that would easily rate 40C, but they label them as 30C. And there are companies that sell 30C cells that should be rated 15C, and 35C cells that are just reasonably rated.
So how are we, as a company, supposed to inform the customers? If we tell them "Don't use brand A, because they lie about their ratings" and we have a lawsuit (and yes, we can be sued by a company based in Hong Kong, but we can't sue them...) If we tell them, "Use brand B, because they are good quality" and we have OEMs who sell their own batteries at our throats. If we tell people how to determine if their batteries are good quality, their eyes glaze over and we lose them to some Chinese company that sells a crap speed control, but doesn't tell the customer that they have to research/test/whatever their batteries before they use them.
So we give a nice general guideline, in a slightly humorous pamphlet. If the customer has a problem because he insists on using junk batteries purchased online from China, we give them a warranty replacement and a lecture on using good batteries and reasonable pinions, and warn them that the next failure caused by bad batteries will not be warranty.
Meanwhile, we continue to improve the controller as we see different failure modes, and make it more and more bulletproof. Nobody even knows that we are now shipping Version 4 of the MMM -- with a few minor changes to make them more reliable. Version 5 should be shipping the end of the year, with even more changes to improve reliability. Version 6 is in layout now, and will bring some more features, and more idiotproofness (that should be a word in the dictionary!) to the MMM.
So, our policy has been to be more "hands-off" about batteries - - support the customer, tell them to use good quality, name-brand batteries, but we won't call out brands specifically. And continue to make the controllers more able to deal with low quality batteries. In the long run, the market will drive the high quality batteries for performance reasons. Eventually even the cheapest batteries will have to perform adequately to compete on the open market.
What would really help is if people would stop encouraging the cheap junk entering the hobby market from direct-from-china internet based stores. They have no accountability, and can supply low quality goods with no chance of liability for the damage their junk causes.
Just my $.02
Patrick
|
Patrick,
I understand your point about not naming names, but it wasn't until recently that the little piece of paper came out about C ratings. Also what's the deal with NiMh batteries wouldn't those have the highest resistance out there and cause damage to the controller? I haven't seen anyone mention that.
And how does one determine if their batteries are of good quality? My eyes don't glaze over so easily. If you are refering to a test to perform, I would be interested in that for sure, but if it's the C rating paper then well I already read it.
Regards,
Jeff