How do you charge the Fatshark Goggle Battery?
How do you charge the fat shark battery? I have the 1800mah 7.4V Fatshark Goggle Battery, and I cannot charge the battery if I connect the balance lead to my balance charger. Can someone help? My charger just says that the battery is disconnected and will not charge the fat shark goggle battery.
The Fatshark goggles have an internal balancer, which is why they removed the 3rd wire from the balance plug. Why not take away the balance plug altogher you ask? Well, because you still need it to power the fan on top of the Fatshark goggles.
A workaround as published by Fatshark, is to use fast charge- most chargers in this mode ignore the balance connector. If that doesnt work, then you can use the charger in NiMH mode. *****AT YOUR OWN RISK****** Be sure to supervise your battery charging if you attempt this.
From Fatshark:
This lithium polymer battery pack is equipped with an internal cell balancing circuit that allows the battery to be charged from standard RC battery chargers. Charge the battery by connecting the barrel connector via the supplied adapter cable and setting the charger for 7.4V, 1800mAh Li-Po, 1.8A (1C).
Some RC chargers require a balance lead connector to be connected to the charger, or else the charging attempt will result in an error. The balance lead on the battery is not a true balance lead and is only used for powering the optional fan faceplate. To charge this battery set your LiPo charger to Fast Charge mode, which usually disables the balance lead requirement (set at 7.4V – 2cell – maximum 1.8A).On some LiPo chargers none of the above procedures will work. In that case you can set the RC charger to NiMH mode and set max charge rate to 1.8A (1C)
Note (1): In NiMH mode the charger may fail to announce completing the charge. You should be able to estimate your battery charge amount by either timing (a fully depleted battery will charge in 1 hour at 1C) or monitoring the mA charge rate on the RC charger display (will drop to almost zero as it becomes full). Remember, you can always remove the battery from the charger and depress the battery level indicator button to check the charge level.Note (2): If battery becomes fully discharged or shorted, an internal safety circuit will trip. To reset the battery, tap 9V direct to the barrel connector via the discharge adapter cable’s banana connector. This will instantly reset the battery and it can be recharged as normal.
If you have a charger that only uses the balance connector, then you might be out of luck as we haven’t found a good solution to charge the fatshark goggle battery besides using an official fatshark battery charger.
Here is the original Fatshark Battery announcement.