When two packs are con-. Up to 10A charge current W continuous input and W continuous output at Up to 3. Charges packs through node connectors with or without connecting main discharge wires to. Compensates for discharge wire lengths up to six feet with 1mV accuracy.
Displays individual cell internal resistance to 0. Backlit LCD display provides easy readability. Configure custom presets, adjust speaker volume, set LCD contrast and control many. Charge Optimization can be set for an accurate 1mV cell balance or for Faster Charging with. Charge Control Software automatically checks for software and charger firmware updates.
Update charger firmware without sending the charger back to the factory. Works with a wide range of power supplies, even those not rated for high power. Intelligent controller performs extensive checks to prevent damage to packs and power supply.
Follow all instructions in this manual to assure safe operation. Always watch LiPo packs while they are charging. Never leave LiPo packs unsupervised dur-.
Follow all guidelines for charging, discharging, handling and storing LiPo cells. Minor arcing may occur when discharge wires are connected to the charger before charging. Previous Page. Next Page. Charger includes two adapters for charging 2s to 4s Cellpro packs having 5-pin node connectors.
You can also manually set charge current to any value between 0. The charger handles multiple chemistries and charge parameter presets. When one pack is connected to the charger, the pack is intially charged at the selected charge rate or the maximum charge rate possible. Page 4 utes at 3C. However, if the packs have different capacities, or were discharged to different levels, charging for the pair could take longer than expected.
Since the charger supports fast balance cur- rent of 1A, all other things being equal, the charger still outperforms competing brands. In most in- stances, by the time the first pack is fully charged, the second pack is already approaching constant voltage charge mode; the battery pack itself is the limiting factor in charge time, not the charger.
Example 1: You are powering an aircraft with two 4s mAh packs connected in series. Because those packs have the same capacity, and were discharged to about the same level, you can expect them to charge in about the same time. It would be appropriate to charge them simultaneously using the Cellpro 10s Charger. Example 2: You are powering one aircraft with a 3s mAh pack, and other air- craft with a 5s mAh pack.
If you charge these packs simultaneously using the Cellpro 10s Charger, it would probably take a long time the mAh pack would become full first, then the charger would switch to its 1A balancing rate to fill up mAh pack, which could take several hours.
In this case, it would be faster to charge these packs separately because the charger can then apply optimum and substantially different charge currents to each pack. When charging two packs simul- taneously, both packs must be connected the same way: either node connectors only, or both node connectors and discharge wires.
When charging only through a node connector, the charger balances individual cells. Charge current is not limited to 4A. Page 6 Connecting one 1s to 10s Cellpro pack 1.
Page 7 Connecting two 1s to 5s Cellpro packs 1. Find the configurations in the diagrams below, then connect as shown in that diagram. Page 10 b. Press and release the Mode button until you see the chemistry you want. Choices are: Lithium Poly 4. Press and hold the Mode button, then release it when the display changes to this: Choose Chg.
Page 11 Charging a pack or packs 1. Before charging, pack s must be properly connected to the charger. These examples assume two packs are being charged; if one pack is being charged, only the top line may appear in some screens. Page 12 If the charger detects a problem, it will stop charging and display a safety code.
If this happens: 1. Press the Mode button to reset the charger. Reconnect the battery properly. There is a date code on the last page in the format YYMMDD which you can use to quickly check to see if there has been any updates. My manual was dated but recently version was released to fix some minor typos and to add descriptions of the factory installed user presets.
The menu for choosing a preset is straightforward and is where the charger begins when powered up, just pick the preset appropriate for the battery and move to the Operations Menu. In the Operations Menu you'll most often just select to start the charge, but you can also adjust the charge rate, clear the preset, or load one of the library presets into that location.
When the "start charge" option is selected the charger will check the battery pack and ask you to confirm the chemistry and in some cases the cell count, after that it displays the battery charging data. Navigating the menu consists of four variations of pressing and holding the mode button see the key in the menu map below. In general a press and release of the button causes the menu to advance forward or changes a value, such as the charge current.
Holding down the button is used to move from one menu to another, to bring up the option to cancel a selection, or to confirm a selection. A slight variation of the button holding operation is that after the button is pressed and held to enter the operations menu, it is held and not released until the desired entry is scrolled to. Those actions alone are enough to use the charger, but for speed of access the direction of scrolling through a menu or list of selections can be reversed with a quick button press and release followed by pressing and holding the button until a special tone sounds to indicate the direction has been reversed.
I find this last button manipulation to be the most trouble prone as I sometime mess up the timing and instead of reversing directions I accidentally initiate a charge which then has to be canceled. Remembering the variations of pressing a single button is not too problematic, but I think FMA should consider adding another button as they are pushing the limits of what can be done with a single button. Let me start by saying that these presets can be as simple or as complex as you like.
The Cellpro 4S can be thought of as a charger with two presets, one for A and another for LiPo, but of course with LiPo you had to scroll through all the various LiPo charge rates as you try to navigate from LiPo to A and back again. The Multi4 has fixed this by making presets designed at a high level to be targeted towards certain types of batteries and charge behaviors.
For instance, you pick a preset based on chemistry, how much effort you want put into balancing, termination voltage, balanced or unbalanced, and small or big batteries. You will most likely end up using just a handful of presets, even if you have a diverse selection of batteries. The only customizing that can be done to a preset from the charger is to change the charge rate, all other preset changes require the CCS and FUIM2 interface cable.
Quick Start my version The back of the Multi4 manual has a 10 step "quick start" guide that while accurate and easy to follow, I feel that it could mislead someone into thinking that the charger is difficult to use. Therefore I offer two quick start examples in order to demonstrate a typical usage. For these examples assume that the last time the charger was used was to charge a LiPo battery using the first preset which gives a 1C charge and an accurate balance. Let's say that you normally use the 1C accurate charge that is in preset 1 but you want to adjust the charge rate to 2C.
You could use preset 2 but you would like to also keep the accurate balance features of preset 1. Let's use a 3S mAh A pack as the example, the default "accurate charge" rate for this battery in the Multi4 is 3. Error codes If there is a problem during the charge an error message will be displayed.
At this time there is table of error codes in the back of the user manual but no detailed description. FMA has announced that in the future descriptions of the error codes will be added to the manual.
If you cannot discern the problem based on this table just contact FMA via telephone or e-mail and they can help you out. It is so useful that I am going to give it a brief coverage and highly recommend everyone that purchases a Multi4 purchases an FUIM2 cable if they do not already own one. Tabs Most of the functionality of the CCS is grouped into 6 tabs. The "Cells" tab displays information about the battery pack being charged The "Supply" tab shows information on the power supplied to the charger and allows setting an input current limit The "Firmware" tab shows information on the firmware available and is used to upgrade the charger's firmware The "Options" tab allows the changing of various visual and audio settings, including the volume of the beeps The "Presets" tab is the heart of the CCS and is where you can customize the presets used in the charger The "No Errors" tab will become the "1 Error" tab if you pick a preset setting that is deemed unsafe The "Presets" tab is the only tab that is not fairly self explanatory, but FMA has included two types of help, one pops up when you hover the mouse pointer over a setting and a more detailed help pops up when you click on the name of a setting.
There are approximately 70 different settings that can be adjusted depending so it is not feasible to mention them all here. However, in general these settings control the following behaviors: Low voltage restore Cell detection Cold weather settings Charge rate Info displayed on the LCD Balance settings Charge termination settings Fuel table values Safety settings such as a timeout Graphing The other major component of the CCS is the graphing window which plots various information, depending on the charge type.
This is typically individual cell voltages, pack voltage, charge current, and fuel percentage. The graphing tool can be customize to use colors of your choosing as I have done and has a very handy built in capability to save the graphs as images. The X and Y coordinates of the cursor are displayed on the graph so you can easily read the voltage or current at any point on the graph. Plots of cell voltages and charge current of a 3S mAh LiMn pack. Custom fuel table As battery technology changes the fuel table in the Multi4 presets may not generate a correct 1C charge current for your newer battery packs.
If you have the FUIM2 and CCS you can charge a battery with a manually set 1C charge rate then import the data from that charge into the CCS and it will automatically generate an appropriate fuel table.
I have a 2S mAh pack and a 3S mAh pack that were being charged at about 0. Subsequent charges of both battery packs resulted in charge rates of about 0. This procedure is detail in this guide by FMA. Fuel table settings. Saving and sharing of presets Preset customization can represent significant time spent tweaking and testing settings, FMA has thoughtfully provided a means to save a backup file containing the settings of the whole charger or just one preset.
If your buddy has a preset you like or you want your charger set up just like his or hers all you have to do is have them e-mail you their settings file and you can import it to your charger. Firmware updates Aproximatly once every two weeks since Multi4 sales began FMA has been releasing firmware updates. Initially the fixes were for FMA factory use, but once input started pouring in from the users the fun updates started rolling out. They are so good about it that once I had noted a bug and was going to email FMA to inform them of it, but before I could do so the next firmware was released, fixing it and some other issues.
One of the most notible CCS and firmware updates is in the works as I write this, the ability to stop and start the charger from your PC. This is a bonus feature that was not even mentioned in the intial product announcement and shows FMA's dedication to improving and adding to the CCS.
Firmware update tab and the new PC remote control feature. Rest assured that when you download a new version of the firmware or CCS that it has already been tested by FMA and several other hobbyists like yourself. Recently a Multi4 owner suggested on RCGroups. Within a few days that change was in beta testing and a total of 12 days after the suggestion was made the change was released to the public. Find me one charger manufacturer in our hobby that has done that.
The charger may say it just charged my cells to 4. My reference for checking voltage and current accuracy is a Fluke V which has a DC voltage base accuracy of 0. All measurements were performed using a charge scenario chosen to minimize that rate of change of the parameter being measured.
For example, the voltage accuracy was tested while performing a 5 mA charge into a mAh A battery pack near a state of being half charged. I have also included a few measurements from my Watt's Up meter as a point of comparison. One of the problems with testing the accuracy of the Multi4 is that there are often three different places to find the indicated value of and one parameter and they can all be different.
For example, the charger LCD will display a supply of For this reason I have chosen to record the accuracy of each of these displayed values.
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