no more li-saver - what lvc?

[ClodMaxx]

i see mike no longer carries the li-saver. would this be a good alternative?

[BrianG]

The LVC in the link is actually a very good idea! Monitoring each cell individually ensures you don't totally kill a slightly weaker cell. Of course, this means you are connecting to the balance connector of the battery rather than the main line, but that's no big deal IMO.

A couple of considerations:

- Make sure that the balance plug wiring on your pack matches what the LVC wants to see. Chances are, the LVC wire order is sequential (makes sense), but some battery taps need to be re-ordered. Or, use an adaptor of some kind.

- If using dual packs, you'll need to make a Y balancer harness so the LVC can monitor both packs as one. The diagrams on the lipo page of my site can help with that, but use the diagram style where you are using the main harness too, but you won't actually be using the main charge harness since the main ESC Y cable does the same thing.

My CommonSenseRC balancer works great, so I see no reason why that one wouldn't be just as good...

[ClodMaxx]

thanks brian. i'm finally migrating from a123 packs to lipo and haven't purchased a lipo pack yet, but will probably go with a NeuEnergy pack. a 5s2p set of a123 batteries don't fit well in a xt8 truggy.

as for making sure the balance plug wiring matches what the lvc wants to see, wouldn't this take care of that? or is it wishful thinking on my part? lol

'CellShield installs easily between your receiver and ESC. Simply plug the battery port on the CellShield into the tap connection on your battery, and it will automatically detect the number and cell order for any pack with .1 tap spacing.'

[BrianG]

Dunno. I suppose you can just try it and see. If it works, great; if not, then you know what to do.

[ClodMaxx]

lol - yep. i meant to put 'guess i'll find out' at the end of that post.

i'll report back with how well it does/doesn't work. i've ordered things from dimension engineering before, and they have an excellent customer service dept. (what i bought worked - it's just that it was a little confusing for me to figure out. big surprise there )

edit: uh-oh. just read this from dimension engineering's site: 'CellShield is intended for aircraft with 0-100% style one direction only throttle. A future product will be aimed at cars.' guess that means it may not work in this case. drat!

[ClodMaxx]

i just spoke to john at dimension engineering. it will work on a car (or truck, or whatever) if the reverse is disabled.

i'm paraphrasing, but when it stops the vehicle, it's designed to ramp down until it sees a value of 0 - which if reverse is enabled, will permanently keep it in reverse. i'm not too concerned about disabling reverse, so i'll order it and see how it works.

[MTBikerTim]

Sounds like in a lot of builds it would throw the brakes on hard lol. When your truck goes cart wheeling forward for no apparent reason you know it's hit lvc.

[ClodMaxx]

lol - i can just picture plane throttles cutting out completely while in mid-flight, and planes falling out of the sky.

i'd hope it would ramp the throttle down slowly. i guess i'll see.