External charging jack

[Cascabel]

Regarding the external charging jack and harness as sold by ModelSmokers.com. Does anybody know the correct wiring hook-up for using an external charging jack with the new 6.0 motherboard ? The 6.0 mother board is to be plugged directly to the battery, and the external charging harness is also intended to connect to the battery. If I don’t use the battery connection directly to the mother board, I get no power to the drive motors. Does something need to be spliced together, or will the charging harness simply not work with 6.0 mother boards ? I know the external charging harness was designed for the earlier motherboards. It's a great idea to not have to remove the battery to charge it. I'm not enough of an electronics guy to start experimenting with it, and I don't want to risk burning something out. I hope I am making my question clear !!

[Beeg]

I'm not familiar with the charging jack you mention but any charger needs to connect to the battery and not directly to the MFCB board. If I understand you correctly. If the charger you mention doesn't come with the necessary "Y" connection you'd need to splice into the battery leads and have provision to connect the balance plug. I would guess the unit would come with instructions and a wiring diagram. If not contact the manufacturer or seller for that info.

Do you already have the unit? Can you post pictures of all the cables and plugs?

[Cascabel]

I'm not familiar with the charging jack you mention but any charger needs to connect to the battery and not directly to the MFCB board. If I understand you correctly. If the charger you mention doesn't come with the necessary "Y" connection you'd need to splice into the battery leads and have provision to connect the balance plug. I would guess the unit would come with instructions and a wiring diagram. If not contact the manufacturer or seller for that info.

Do you already have the unit? Can you post pictures of all the cables and plugs?

They are available on ebay with pictures Just look up Heng Long charging jack. It does come with instructions, but not for 6.0 boards. The manufacturer does not have an answer to the question. It goes through the power switch upon installation. Works really well on the older systems. I use them on several of my tanks.

[fuchstraumer]

I'd have to think about this more, and I'm not really anywhere near as comfortable with electrical work as I was a few years ago when it was (briefly) my major but the premise of that switch is fairly simple - when the power switch is off, it forms a complete circuit between the battery and the charging jack. This "cuts off" the circuit going to the board so that when we're charging we're not just pumping power into the board directly (almost certainly not good!). When we power on the tank, the charging circuit is now cut and the battery forms a complete circuit with the board.

This used to work because the switch was just there in series with the battery leads (going to the board), so that when we turned it off we were wholly breaking the circuit between board and battery. Now that it's on a separate lead, this won't work without some modification.

I'd much prefer someone else more experienced to chime in, but I've been thinking about this as well since I'd like to get a similar setup going for my tanks that are just using NiMh packs (although I still highly recommend you fabricate a lead that makes it so you have a smart charger doing this work though: keep charge rates low too, since we're charging batteries in a tight enclosed space with poor air circulation). I think you could do the following:

- bridge the power switch pins with a JST plug that just has the wires connected to each other (like how the Haya / HL Pro barrel smoke bridges the airsoft trigger pins)
- create a wiring harness like the older 5.3 setups that you linked, or just use one directly
- now your power switch isn't so much "Off/On" but a "Charge/On" mode. When the switch inline with the battery is on, the plug in the board is already bridged and closed so the board turns on.
- When in charge mode, the bridged plug doesn't matter as the battery circuit isn't closed and isn't providing any power anyways. Then, sending juice into your battery without popping the board should be doable.

When charging, the tank is off and won't be receiving any power from the battery since the circuit is no longer closed/complete. I think. Consider this a strong disclaimer of "don't do this until someone else chimes in" because I'd hate for you to let the magic smoke out of a nice new 6.0 board. But this does feel workable.

Edit - Note that this is really only suitable for battery types that don't use balance plugs. I wouldn't charge a lithium polymer battery of any type in a tight enclosed space that I can't keep an eye on, myself.