WATCH THE UPDATED VIDEO NEXT. I show a much better way of figuring out what the correct voltage value is for your charger. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9RwHk3QhpyA.html
I can't tell u how many times you help me out of a jam.. For the last month I actually thought I had to update the firmware to get my charger calibrated properly but here u come to the rescue like u always do...thanks for all the help buddy!
Thank you for showing me this. My ISDT T8 says it has 12V input voltage. So i modded my 500W 12v ATX PSU for use with it. Unfortunately the new firmware will not let you set the cutoff voltage below exactly 12V. So until knowing i can calibrate the input voltage I could only get about 100W of input before my PSU sagged below 12V and hit the cutoff. So now I just calibrated the input voltage high and can get access to the full rated amps out of my PSU (around 350W or so as written for the 12V rail). Much better now! For those reading this the ISDT T6 is rated as low as 8V input voltage and is better suited for this setup without making this mod, which was the route I was going to take until I learned that the input voltage can be calibrated high.
I dunno what to say. The firmware readout of my unit is the same version number of what's available on the ISDT firmware download page. When i go to the settings, the voltage cutoff will not let me configure it less than exactly 12v.
My only guess is that the manufacturer had issues converting less than 12V up to 8s and made the change. My charging application is only at around 13V but I wanted very high output amps, so I chose this model. If it is the case they made this change on purpose then I should avoid whatever issue they were seeing with the DC/DC up converter. Either that or it was an oversight.
IMO calibrating to a 1/1000 of a volt using a battery checker is not a good option as the checker is powered from the battery that it tests and that will definitely affect the last digit at the very least. A good multimeter is the proper way of doing it. Luckily DC voltage measurement is the easiest to do so there are a lot of cheap and accurate meters that can do it and a fluke level meter is not necessary (their main claim to fame is their safety and for the voltages we need it doesn't matter). You need at least a 6000 count meter to calibrate to 1/1000V. I recommend the aneng an8008 (10000 count) which can be had for under 20$ in aliexpress or banggood (and is sometimes on sale for 16$) and is very accurate for electronic purposes (see EEVblog's review of it - it matches very high end bench meters). If you are really serious about accuracy you can get a voltage reference to verify your meter (a good AD584 module can be had for just a few dollars on ebay).
We should be pressuring isdt to calibrate their chargers! I’ve purchased 6 isdt in the last 4 months. All overcharge cell #3 by as much as .08 volts and undercharging the others by .1 measured with a real fluke.
Agreed it's not easy to get the absolute number right. But the relative calibration (make all channels agree) is quite doable. Just use a cheap multimeter, preferably with mV resolution, and measure one cell at the time via the balance connector.
Good bat checker worthy of your money for sure. I "saved some money" by getting a five pack from the usual source to find not a one was consistent with multimeters. Looks like yours is the real deal, hope that don't sell out because of the Bardwell effect, as in you recommend and they immediately go out of stock! Thx Joshua for the heads up.
the correct way to check is use a voltage reference module, it outputs specific voltages and you calibrate your meter to match it. now in the real world the way you do it is in this video, if you got some meters saying about the same thing than, good enuff 4 me
I don't know how confident I'd be in the accuracy of the voltage checker- certainly not enough to re-adjust my charger based on it. even a few 10's of mV is most likely enough to shorten battery lifespan. Lots of resolution doesn't make the meter accurate on an absolute level. It's only really useful for comparative measurements with the same meter. you could be just offsetting the charger in a different direction if you battery checker isn't 100% accurate. I would at the very least validate it with a half-decent multimeter. Even a china-domestic cheap fluke, or a brymen or higher end uni-t would do the job fine. That said, thanks for the useful info, I had no idea there was a secret cal menu on my charger, I had been told over and over that the ISDTs were 100% non user adjustable, which was literally my only issue with them (well, aside from the horrible roller style selector wheel on my Q6...) BTW, when I checked my Q6's calibration, it was within 15-20mV on each of the cells, and the overall voltage was about 60mV out. Pretty bloody impressive, though I'd be curious to see how that calibration tracks over different temperatures. It's around 30*C here at the moment, so I'll have to check the calibration again in the winter, or maybe stick my charger in the fridge some time :D
I agree. Don't forget that the pin was also different from the other pins on the T8. None of this is as good as an actual calibrated reference, but with a difference of 0.3 volts, it really feels like it should be pretty trivial to at least improve things. 0.3 is pretty far out.
The problem with that approach is, the way they've implemented the cal menu (at least on ISDT chargers), you'd need at least 4 separate references in series, hooked up like a lipo+balance lead, because it won't calibrate unless it sees a full pack plugged in, and all the cells. Fortunately, I have a pretty nice 50000 count 0.03% meter to calibrate mine with a regular battery pack. Gotta love the feeling of a piece of equipment that's freshly tweaked to within half a gnats ass of reality. Though TBH, I was pretty impressed with the factory cal on my ISDT Q6. All the cells were within 10mV of my meter, and the over-all voltage was only 50 or so mV out. I'd be curious to know what the tempco is like on these chargers, I could see it having been bang-on at the factory, and just had it drift with the hot summer weather here.
So I did this different. I used my parallel board...couple extra jumpers so I could have my batt checker and batter plugged in while calibrating. I did 6 ISDT chargers this was which all of them were about .010 high (probably for safety). I took that to .005 to get a little more mah in my packs :)
I feel like I need to go check mine now. When are we getting some juicy battery test videos with your new battery load checker thingy that was so expensive!?
Hi, I have the same ISDT T8 charger, all good until now when I use it to 8s. The question is, do 8s chargers in general or this one in particular have errors when used to their limits that is to charge 8s? I don't know who to ask and you seem a very well informed person. I've builded three 8s8p lithium ion packs from 21700 Samsung INR 40t 4000mA 35A new cells fron the well known Nkon european company. All cells had 3,44v. They are to be connected in series to form an 2,8kw 24s8p electric paramotot battery.(project on openppg forum/community/builds/eppg project-2,8kw battery.) problem described on page 13. It seems I can't attach link or the comm is not posted. From first charging (the three 8s 32v packs in parallel) I've saw that one cell nr one on the charger (last cell in the pack) the voltage tends to remain behind like 3,62v discharged or 4,07v charged and other cell groups 3,66-68 and 4,08-09 (verified with a volt meter) Also the impedance is around 6mohms on this first cell of all three packs and all others have like 0,7 mohms! (This is when all three packs are charging in parallel so a cell group with this impedance is basicaly 24 4Ah cells in parallel that is 96 Amps). When I connect only one 8s8p pack to the charger the impedance is 18mohms on this particular cell group and others have 2 - 2.5mohms this also on each of the three packs which kind of excludes the probability of a bad or disconnected cell or wire. A well known electric patamotor builder and RC user told me that 8s charger tend to have errors on last/first cell when used with 8s packs and after years he didn't find the cause yet. So I've made myself wires so I can hook up only two group cells through the balancing wire and the results where all over the place, I mean one time a cell group shows 18 mohms and the second group 43 mohms, next time the one with 18 has 52mohms etc..but this way I realised that the last/first cell group didn't show the same huge difference from other groups like it did when all 8s are charged together so all groups are probably fine. I've worked a lot att his battery, it coste me a fortune, above 1.000 euros and I whant to fly with it so I realy need to know if I can trust it or the charger, and If I need another charger that realy handles 8s so bee it. Really need your proffesional oppinion on this. Appreciate it. Thank you!
HA i have 8 of these battery checkers and they all read differ. i was using to check my electric trike one for each pack need to ship back to ISDT to have them calibrated the same
I think it's unlikely that ISDT would calibrate them any further than they did at the factory. For this price, this is the level of precision you can expect. Here is how to calibrate them yourself if you prefer. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-L5gAohxwOxU.html
Fluke knows their equipment is right because their equipment was tested at NIST. That NIST paper is a traceablilty document. It is basically saying my meter is with in x tolerance of their meter and their meter was tested by NIST or some other party in a longer traceablilty chain. Ideally you would want to be as close as possible to the NIST equipment to avoid increasing your measurement uncertainty.
Have you used the ISDT T8 with 8 cells and notice anny voltage or impedance differences on first/last cell? Is this a known issue with chargers when charging 8s?
I have a charger that has 2 channels, and I suspect one of them is off. After each flight I individually storage charge each battery, however one port seems to take significantly longer than the other port. I'm thinking maybe calibration is off. The charger is a Hota d6+.
I bought a Q8 to replace the T8 I cooked, I guess it's me fault! But I killed the charger and power supply, but now I have a 200amp, 24volt power supply, so that should not be a issue, and I'm using fuses,
Really nice video, thanks for that info!! Where did you get that calibrating procedure? Great job, this video starts a nice debate here to accurrate measuring with different equipment! Thanks again!
It gives you the option to calibrate The icharger x6 as well but I think the ichargers are super accurate and there’s no need to calibrate them 🤷🏻♂️ but who knows I would like for somebody to do a video on that icharger x6 to see how accurate it really is
It's nice that ISDT gives precise reading of upto 1/100 or 1/1000 V. But if you want a reading of your battery that so precise wouldn't you consider the the quality/resistance of those connectors and pins of your battery and charger? Specially if they've been subjected to a lot of use and abuse they probably had some wear already.
Alvin Navales there's a minimum of current that goes into checking the voltage, so even though the cables had some difference in resistance, the voltage drop would be miniscule
Hi Joshua..since 2 days i have the iSDT D2 Dual Smart Charger..nice charger, but now only the first one charge..the 2th charger keep give *Abnormal battery connection* and i tryed but i dont know how to reset or fix the second charger.please help! Thank in advance ..keep doing the nice work..have a nice day
hello, congratulations on the video, I use a lipo 2s battery of 6000, when calibrating this 3.960 cell 1 and 3.820 cell. I must go up to 3,960 or put 4,200 in both cells?
Mine charges a few cells to 4.35, when set to 4.15, it's a good thing it was a low current charge, I noticed the 7th cell reads 4.04, when the meter and everything else said it was 4.10-4.15v it's a bit off, and refuses to balance!
Wondered if you have anything on upgrading firmware on these ISDT chargers. I bought a Q8 and when doing the update using their app on Windows 10 (tried Mac also), Windows alerted a virus and deleted the exe leaving the Q8 bricked. Have been trying to get a solution as I believe one of the issues is the continuous trickle charge once full charge is achieved on Lipos. Cheers, love your work.
If you want to be really, really sure, you can get your multimeter calibrated by a certified company. It is about 50,- EUR in Germany. Or you could use your companies calibrated devices for checking, like I do :D
Here is a price list from a company in my area, you might want to google for "calibration services" to find one in yours: www.elmtec.de/download/Kalibrierpreisliste.pdf It is in German but there are pictures besides the price-tags. They will use a standardized measuring procedure and hand you a sheet of paper about how much your device is off. You have to decide, if it is sufficient for your purpose.
calibration doesn't make the meter any more accurate/correct, it just insures that the meter is within it's stated accuracy spec. Calibration doesn't involve adjusting anything, it's literally just testing the meter up against a reference standard
That's what I wrote. It is basically just the paperwork a company has to have to get a fancy certificate that allows them to put shiny stickers on their products to feign quality. :) Which fills the pockets of these service providers. The expensive devices can indeed be re-calibrated, but that is done by the manufacturer.
Eh, in industrial or engineering land, calibration is pretty important for being able to trust the reading you get off your test equipment. useless for a home lab in most cases, but I wouldn't want to be testing a widget in a production environment, then find out that the meter I had been using was drifting around outside of the spec it had listed
What is the definition of the output voltage in the calibration menu? I think it’s what the T8 is reading as the battery connected on the right side of the charger, “charged battery”
Output voltage calibrates the output XT60. If the output voltage is mis-calibrated, your batteries will end up at a 4.21 volts or 4.19 volts instead of 4.20.
Joshua Bardwell no I feel dumb. How would you check the voltage off the output xt60. Certainly you can’t meter the output on the T8, it would throw up that error message. I assumed it would match the actual voltage of the battery. Maybe I just answered my own question. Love the videos. Keep it up!
You calibrate the output XT60 the same as you do the input and the balance. You have a known-precise voltage source and you plug it in. So you could take a battery and very precisely measure its voltage, then plug it in and calibrate to that voltage.
Thanks for the great and helpful video! I have tried to contact ISDT support by using their support email address, but I never get an answer. Do you know of a way to contact them? You might know the answer to the question I have for them: When I set it to charge a lipo to 4.2 volts per cell, it charges the battery to around 4.15-4.17 volts per cell. I turned "trickle charge" to "on," and that does help some. The voltage readings on the charger cycle from 4.17 to 4.21 or even 4.22, then when I stop the charging it will settle to around 4.18. Do you know if this is normal? Is the charger smart enough to sense the battery's resistance or response such that it can detect if it could harm the battery to charge it all the way to 4.2 volts per cell?
I actually learned several things today. This and ISDT's website is down so I can't fix my SC-608. Do you guys know if by upgrading my firmware to 2.x it will show me the serial like in the video?
Joshua, do you know that you can also do this calibration on the isdt D2 charger, the D2 changer has my interest but I want to be sure I can calibrate it. thank you
This is great information. But I cant find anyway to calibrate my EV-PEAK CQ3 100W. No pdf on google that I could find and its giving me bogus voltage x cell. even on cell 5 its putting out 4.26. Need help with this charger. Thanks.
Does anybody know Is there a way to change the default specs . My lipo4 have a nominal 3.2 and a full charge of 3.65 but the charger lowest range for full charge is 4.1
I have a problem with my ISDT D2 which is that that charger does not save the calibration settings - after restart, it still shows the old "wrong" measurement. Anyone experienced the same?
joshua i watched your video on the dys mi200 and i bought it. i cant find on the internet how to get audio from this. im running a swift 2. i had audio on the stock one and it clearly says on the vtx audio and video. but i this mi says av on the left and theres only one pin.
Joshua!!!!! Can we balance several batteries with the jb stix balance board and idst' bg-8s??? or is there some other components on the jb stix balance board which would stop this ?? thanks for the charger info by the way my charger shows exactly the same readings are off on cell 4!
Josh i have the ISDT D2 . All of sudden i hear a snap and it shutsdown and its dead now. I opened it up and found a small capacitor burnt next to the TEA1716T chip. Changed it and still ( its in the power board).
JOSHUA!! can we balance lipos with your JB STIX v2 parallel board and a bg-8s balancer? thanks for this video my charger was showing cell 4 low as well!!! legend thanks mate!
+T Dub of you try to balance a whole balance board with that tiny balancer I think it will take forever. But you can plug it into the balance port of the parallel board I suppose.
thanks mate ill give it a go , i also wonder about the jb stix board with the isdt lipo discharger? anyway thanks again for all your vids man ... legend. come fly in Australia one day!
would this make the charger only work at a low charge rate? my Q6 is only putting out 0.1A regardless of chemistry, ie., Pb, lipo or Nimh all the same, 0.1A charge rate..
Any idea why isdt T8 would be showing 4.2 volts that are jumping around through the charging port when in reality the voltage is 3.7 when measure with a meter and the quad? This is a 1s battery, i have 3 chargers and they all have the same issue. I can charge a 2s, 3s, etc. just fine.
@@JoshuaBardwell i dont know how or why, but i think it was in the connector. I bypassed 1 of the connectors i had and it is working. Thanks for the input though, keep up the good work.
As long as the Fluke multimeter has been calibrated. In the electrical industry we send multifunction testers and multimeters to get calibrated by a lab.
Update, when I charge only one battery it is well balanced (after my calibration, which holds BTW). But when I parallel charge a bunch (6-12 lipos) , they aren't balanced at the end.
I'm using the q6 300w charger but the fan never gose on. Temp on screen reached 41*C. Only charging 2s battery. Did self check and fan went on. Is it supposed to go on all the time, or only when temp gets high?
My 4s turnigy grapenes are sagging, I fully charge then and they fly for about 30 seconds before sagging to 10-11V. Is there something wrong with them or how can I re-purpose them?
I guess what I was really asking is how do I charge them with my Q6. Is there any special adapter out there? Do I need to use the balance connector also or should I just connect the XT60 output to the end of the battery somehow?
Josh I have a question for you I have a sp racing F3 bored and when I flashed it and all that comes good. Went out fluid for a couple days crashed it Come Back Inn put it up on betaflight it hooked up alright for about 10 20 seconds and then shut off. do you know what's going on? The Flash's real fast and then disconnects
Are they coming out with a 4.35v per cell charge capability for this charger firmware update? Wanted to use this charger on my high voltage lipo. Has anyone successfully bumped the voltage up in calibration mode to charge a lihv battery?
Best answer, listen to me, lololol, do not buy a 400 dollar fluke meter, I am not sure why Joshua is even pulling that one out. Buy a 100 dollar Klein meter, much better than fluke and 75 percent less, and still calibrated. The Klein meters are all the beauty of fluke and all of the less expense you would want. These meters give you much more than simply voltage testing and when building and diagnosing your quad can be essential. Sorry Josh I am stealing some thunder, but its true fluke would be the last thing I would buy, I am an electrician and most of use do not use fluke unless you want to be the ooooh look at me I own a fluke boy, flukes are nice, built well, and come with lots of bells and whistles that really do not apply to everyone. Klein cater to the tradesman and give you the precision you need and the reliability, but without the price tag, Klein are also built with more durability than fluke, I dropped my Klein off a 1 story house, about 10 feet or so, which would have destroyed any fluke, and my Klein was fine, not even a scratch. Anyway Klein look them up and enjoy.
Josh - Strange video, strange advise to calibrate something with something uncalibrated, or worse being powered from same voltage source...this is the rare occasion when doing nothing is actually much better and much safer than what you suggest. You can borrow a multi meter or a voltage reference or both ... hope no one get hurt and no house bursts in flames after following this method with 1 $ lipo testers as reference.
I also hope everyone takes all heed to the warnings I gave in the video. I'm very glad for suggestions of affordable, accurate multimeters and voltage references, and I definitely will be doing a followup video about them. And when we get a voltage reference, I'll see how close or far off my method was! But I still maintain that if multiple devices say a given cell is 0.3 high, then it's not out of line to calibrate that down by 0.3 or so. I mean... even cheap $1 battery checkers and $20 multimeters are probably accurate to the 1/10th of a volt, right? And if they all agree, then...
my two 8s Battgo are off by 10 mV on one cell (different), a pitty. ohhh amazing, the balancer can also be calibrated manually, thanks so much ! I match it with that precise multimeter: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VgOn7rJriAs.html
