Mavic Pro Battery Mod

[gigelu]

Discharge (C rating) is not the only rating. There is also capacity where the GA have 3500 mah and the HG have 3000mah capacity. In a lower current draw application the GA cells are preferred, especially where we have cells in parallel configuration, cutting current draw in half across cells. If you used HG cells in the same titan pack configuration the pack would have a puny 6AH rating ;-).

I am not convinced of these arguments:
NCR18650GA has 3300mAh, not 3500mAh

but most important is their power density:

NCR18650GA has 224 Wh/kg
LG 18650HG2 has 240 Wh/kg

To overcome the poor discharge rating of NCR (10A/3.3A = ~3C) by using them in parallel, you need 3 chains, not 2. I've looked over my flight logs and it I've seen Mavic using 25Ah.

 

[gigelu]

Because with more higher discharge you compromise capacity. Also higher discharge creates more heat if you keep them at the edge. I built a pack and had to make a choice between these two cells and went with the GA for capacity and the fact that my UBS power pack will never use the full total power output even with a Qualcomm QC 3.0 device.
The charging rate still allows me to charge my USB battery pack in 2 hours, and I have more capacity. It gets over 13Ah real capacity for this little USB battery that uses 4 18650 cells.
YZXStudio 8 Power Bank Review (4x18650) | BudgetLightForum.com

So in the correct configuration you can have a pack that provides the power needed without maxing it out and extend the life of the battery this way, and a higher capacity run time.
Also, LG is sort of new to the high drain 18650 cell game, they are probably just copying others chemistries at this point.Panasonic/Sanyo and Samsung have been doing it for a while. Samsung being one of the first with the 25R, or was it the 20R. Pioneer has the leading world class battery manufacturing plant and is in partnership with Tesla with the new plant making batteries for the cars for building the MagaWat plant.

I think the 18650 and Li-Ion battery chemistry game is pretty much maxed out at this point unless some new element is discovered to be used. We can fine tune the making or them, make the cells safer themselves without the need for the protection boards and make the 18650 detentions a little bigger. But no new breakthroughs has happen in the recent years after all lithium batteries have been under redesign since it was invented by Sony in 1901. Made to be somewhat concidered safe in the 1980s by Sony but then was the big recall of laptops. Made better over the years with different chemistries then more powerful for amperage constant peak power, and now we are at today for the most part.

It all about the battery for the application. And no offense, I would rather do my own testing then look at others reviews for real data. Some reviews are don't with cheap test equiptment, far out of calibration and I've seen some done wrong also.
I defiantly don't look at vape reviews even if they make pretty graphs because they rate them and run thenbayteries out of manufacturer specifications with some rating they call PULSE, I call it damaging the battery and waiting for failure. Just a matter of time.

I'm sorry but I can't take the data provided in your reply seriously, because I could not verify any of your arguments with the reality:

1. Lithium batteries were proposed by British chemist M Stanley Whittingham while working for Exxon in the 1970s.
2. 1991 – Sony and Asahi Kasei released the first commercial lithium-ion battery.
3. 18650 is a form factor, not battery chemistry.
4. I'm not buying the argument that Panasonic is better just because they have longer battery experience. H-NMC has been invented in 2001, and LG had battery factory from at least 1999:

• 2001 – Zhonghua Lu and Jeff Dahn file a patent[58] for the lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) class of positive electrode materials, which offers safety and energy density improvements over the widely used lithium cobalt oxide.
• 1999 SEP Completed construction of Cheongju plant for rechargeable batteries, phophors and CCL

5. There have been several breakthroughs in Lithium chemistry in past years (check wikipedia)
6. There was no recall of Lithium batteries in 1980; they were not even invented. There was one big recall of batteries made by Sony Sony from April 2004 to July 18 2006.

sorry but by this point I stopped checking your other arguments...

Regarding your comment about charging speed the products datasheets mention:
NCR18650GA - Standard charging at 1475mAh (requires 270minutes), no fast charging
LG18650HG2 - standard charging at 1500mAh and can also charge at 4000mAh (fast charging).

 

[gigelu]

Just received. Pouring like crazy here. Plus have to finish direct power mod. Juggling drone hobby and family taking its toll.

I become more and more suspicios regarding the advertising of these Titan cells.


1. According to their website: This endurance pack uses the NCR18650GA cell
2. Official datasheet of NCR18650GA says that this cell has: 224 Wh/kg and the cell has 48grams. This means that at best it can store 10.752 Watt (although it can't as some weight is the battery case which stores no energy).

Note that 10.752Watt is at 2Amperes discharge rate (0.6C)

Anyway, assuming 10.752Watts/cell and we can clearly see that the above battery has 9 cells how did they manage to get 120 watts?

I believe Panasonic which manufactures the batteries and not Titan which just uses a spot welder and a shrinkable plastic to manufacture the above.

The above battery has no more than 96.768 Watts (at 0.6C)

 

[ScottJD]

I'm sorry but I can't take the data provided in your reply seriously, because I could not verify any of your arguments with the reality:

1. Lithium batteries were proposed by British chemist M Stanley Whittingham while working for Exxon in the 1970s.
2. 1991 – Sony and Asahi Kasei released the first commercial lithium-ion battery.
3. 18650 is a form factor, not battery chemistry.
4. I'm not buying the argument that Panasonic is better just because they have longer battery experience. H-NMC has been invented in 2001, and LG had battery factory from at least 1999:

• 2001 – Zhonghua Lu and Jeff Dahn file a patent[58] for the lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) class of positive electrode materials, which offers safety and energy density improvements over the widely used lithium cobalt oxide.
• 1999 SEP Completed construction of Cheongju plant for rechargeable batteries, phophors and CCL

5. There have been several breakthroughs in Lithium chemistry in past years (check wikipedia)
6. There was no recall of Lithium batteries in 1980; they were not even invented. There was one big recall of batteries made by Sony Sony from April 2004 to July 18 2006.

sorry but by this point I stopped checking your other arguments...

Regarding your comment about charging speed the products datasheets mention:
NCR18650GA - Standard charging at 1475mAh (requires 270minutes), no fast charging
LG18650HG2 - standard charging at 1500mAh and can also charge at 4000mAh (fast charging).

Wow, and I was going to send you a message earlier giving you props for actually doing research, but I'll come up with another reply instead with fact checking what I write from now on, or you know what, don't take me seriously.

 

[ScottJD]

I am not convinced of these arguments:
NCR18650GA has 3300mAh, not 3500mAh

but most important is their power density:

NCR18650GA has 224 Wh/kg
LG 18650HG2 has 240 Wh/kg

To overcome the poor discharge rating of NCR (10A/3.3A = ~3C) by using them in parallel, you need 3 chains, not 2. I've looked over my flight logs and it I've seen Mavic using 25Ah.

The 18650GA cells are rated for 3500 optimal, but average 3450 capacity as stated in the data sheet. Anne you are looking at a different data sheet?

And the mavic log would report Amp Hours asks 25Ah. I haven't looked at the logs personally but I can't even be sure if they report in Amps at all some most logging is done in numbers of 1000 meaning 1,000 mile amps, or 1 Amp.
Did you mean you Jane interrupted the log as seeing the mavic pull oeaksmof 25Amps?

 

[gigelu]

Wow, and I was going to send you a message earlier giving you props for actually doing research, but I'll come up with another reply instead with fact backing what I write from now on, or you know what, don't take me seriously.

I'm sorry and I apologize if my answer offended you. I am not here to offend anyone or to get any kind of fame/respect from other people.

I'm just trying to make a better battery than DJI's so we can fly with our Mavics longer. For my designed battery, I don't think that the Titan (NCR18650GA) is the best choice. Your answer was dismissing my choice of battery cell so far so I needed to check if you are right before switching cells.

As it stands, I have no worries that LG will catch fire and their density is better.

I am not very happy to connect the cells directly into mavic. I want to do some control circuit as well (smart battery)

Currently I am looking into solving:

1. Wide variation of tension in the cell versus with what Mavic is expecting to get (NCR has the same issue). 3s? 4s? need to try or open the Mavic and read all the caps and mosfets rating to ensure that it will not burn.
2. What is the battery communication protocol? Has anyone reverse engineered it?
3. How to balance the cells internally cheap? (if possible) - regarding this I don't like the idea of wasting power in resistors. I'm thinking if I can use a capacitor to charge it from once cell and discharge it in another. There was some work on this: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7723882/ and www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/6/4/2149/pdf

 

[ScottJD]

I'm sorry but I can't take the data provided in your reply seriously, because I could not verify any of your arguments with the reality:

1. Lithium batteries were proposed by British chemist M Stanley Whittingham while working for Exxon in the 1970s.
2. 1991 – Sony and Asahi Kasei released the first commercial lithium-ion battery.
3. 18650 is a form factor, not battery chemistry.
4. I'm not buying the argument that Panasonic is better just because they have longer battery experience. H-NMC has been invented in 2001, and LG had battery factory from at least 1999:

• 2001 – Zhonghua Lu and Jeff Dahn file a patent[58] for the lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) class of positive electrode materials, which offers safety and energy density improvements over the widely used lithium cobalt oxide.
• 1999 SEP Completed construction of Cheongju plant for rechargeable batteries, phophors and CCL

5. There have been several breakthroughs in Lithium chemistry in past years (check wikipedia)
6. There was no recall of Lithium batteries in 1980; they were not even invented. There was one big recall of batteries made by Sony Sony from April 2004 to July 18 2006.

sorry but by this point I stopped checking your other arguments...

Regarding your comment about charging speed the products datasheets mention:
NCR18650GA - Standard charging at 1475mAh (requires 270minutes), no fast charging
LG18650HG2 - standard charging at 1500mAh and can also charge at 4000mAh (fast charging).

Sorry, it was 1912 that was the first lithium battery. Notice I said lithium battery as I did in my last post, not a mix of chemicals that make is safer were the name Li-Ion comes from despite many Li-Ion batteries also being many different kinds of chemistries these days.
So I was off from the late 1980 to the early 1990, I'll be sure to google everything from now on before posting and not count on my fading memory or just leave the dates out if it's going to be fact checked and called on that serousely.
This arcticle covers most of the fact I mentioned
Lithium-based Batteries Information

As you fact seem to come from a Wikipedia that is a web page that can be updated ad edited by multiple sources in hopes other people correct the wrong facts and add to the wikis data.
Lithium-ion battery - Wikipedia

So let this be the end, call it even. Keep checking and learning, it's obvious you have a mind for extreme research and have the time to do it. I say keep doing it, but please don't call people put with comments about "I can't take you seriously".
That could have started more like a question of facts, maybe asking were I base my fact from to compare to what google told you instead of calling me out.
Tuece?

 

[ScottJD]

I'm sorry and I apologize if my answer offended you. I am not here to offend anyone or to get any kind of fame/respect from other people.

I'm just trying to make a better battery than DJI's so we can fly with our Mavics longer. For my designed battery, I don't think that the Titan (NCR18650GA) is the best choice. Your answer was dismissing my choice of battery cell so far so I needed to check if you are right before switching cells.

As it stands, I have no worries that LG will catch fire and their density is better.

I am not very happy to connect the cells directly into mavic. I want to do some control circuit as well (smart battery)

Currently I am looking into solving:

1. Wide variation of tension in the cell versus with what Mavic is expecting to get (NCR has the same issue). 3s? 4s? need to try or open the Mavic and read all the caps and mosfets rating to ensure that it will not burn.
2. What is the battery communication protocol? Has anyone reverse engineered it?
3. How to balance the cells internally cheap? (if possible) - regarding this I don't like the idea of wasting power in resistors. I'm thinking if I can use a capacitor to charge it from once cell and discharge it in another. There was some work on this: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7723882/ and www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/6/4/2149/pdf

It seems we crossed on our last two replies at the same time.
So before crossing again how about we move this off to a PM conversation?
Scott

 

[gigelu]

The 18650GA cells are rated for 3500 optimal, but average 3450 capacity as stated in the data sheet. Anne you are looking at a different data sheet?

Are we looking at the same datasheet?

13.86W*9pcs = 124.74Watt. Maybe this is the way Titan has calculated the advertised power....

 

[CyberNate]

I become more and more suspicios regarding the advertising of these Titan cells.


1. According to their website: This endurance pack uses the NCR18650GA cell
2. Official datasheet of NCR18650GA says that this cell has: 224 Wh/kg and the cell has 48grams. This means that at best it can store 10.752 Watt (although it can't as some weight is the battery case which stores no energy).

Note that 10.752Watt is at 2Amperes discharge rate (0.6C)

Anyway, assuming 10.752Watts/cell and we can clearly see that the above battery has 9 cells how did they manage to get 120 watts?

I believe Panasonic which manufactures the batteries and not Titan which just uses a spot welder and a shrinkable plastic to manufacture the above.

The above battery has no more than 96.768 Watts (at 0.6C)

Each cell has power density of 12.6 watt-hr capacity which is calculated at (3500mah / 1000) * 3.6V. 3500mah is a bit high, more like 3450mah, but close enough.

If you are talking about power output, the cells can discharge at 10A (3c) which gives 10A * 3.6V = 36watts per cell. In a 3s2p configuration that's 108watts.

Edit:
Sorry, off on math. Should be 218 watts continuous. Cells are in parallel.

 

[gigelu]

Sorry, it was 1912 that was the first lithium battery. Notice I said lithium battery as I did in my last post, not a mix of chemicals that make is safer were the name Li-Ion comes from despite many Li-Ion batteries also being many different kinds of chemistries these days.
So I was off from the late 1980 to the early 1990, I'll be sure to google everything from now on before posting and not count on my fading memory or just leave the dates out if it's going to be fact checked and called on that serousely.
This arcticle covers most of the fact I mentioned
Lithium-based Batteries Information

As you fact seem to come from a Wikipedia that is a web page that can be updated ad edited by multiple sources in hopes other people correct the wrong facts and add to the wikis data.
Lithium-ion battery - Wikipedia

So let this be the end, call it even. Keep checking and learning, it's obvious you have a mind for extreme research and have the time to do it. I say keep doing it, but please don't call people put with comments about "I can't take you seriously".
That could have started more like a question of facts, maybe asking were I base my fact from to compare to what google told you instead of calling me out.
Tuece?

I did not know that. Thank you for the links and I apologize again for offending you.

 

[ScottJD]

Sorry, it was 1912 that was the first lithium battery. Notice I said lithium battery as I did in my last post, not a mix of chemicals that make is safer were the name Li-Ion comes from despite many Li-Ion batteries also being many different kinds of chemistries these days.
So I was off from the late 1980 to the early 1990, I'll be sure to google everything from now on before posting and not count on my fading memory or just leave the dates out if it's going to be fact checked and called on that serousely.
This arcticle covers most of the fact I mentioned
Lithium-based Batteries Information

As you fact seem to come from a Wikipedia that is a web page that can be updated ad edited by multiple sources in hopes other people correct the wrong facts and add to the wikis data.
Lithium-ion battery - Wikipedia

So let this be the end, call it even. Keep checking and learning, it's obvious you have a mind for extreme research and have the time to do it. I say keep doing it, but please don't call people put with comments about "I can't take you seriously".
That could have started more like a question of facts, maybe asking were I base my fact from to compare to what google told you instead of calling me out.
Tuece?

Are we looking at the same datasheet
13.86W*9pcs = 124.74Watt. Maybe this is the way Titan has calculated the advertised power....

I don't think we are, what revision and date is yours?
I specifically remember the reference and max capacity being 3500, and typical based on average sampling cells being manufactured being 3450. Then again if you shop for this battery you will also see some seller claiming 3500 and some claiming 3450.

 

[gigelu]

Each cell has power density of 12.6 watt-hr capacity which is calculated at (3500mah / 1000) * 3.6V. 3500mah is a bit high, more like 3450mah, but close enough.

If you are talking about power output, the cells can discharge at 10A (3c) which gives 10A * 3.6V = 36watts per cell. In a 3s2p configuration that's 118watts.

This kind of calculation is incorrect. I have given detailed explanation why in my previous posts from today and yesterday.
Panasonic mentions clearly 224W/kg and LG is even clearer and apart from mentioning 240w/kg they give a detailed table: 10A -> 9.8W, 20A ->9.2W

 

[CyberNate]

This kind of calculation is incorrect. I have given detailed explanation why in my previous posts from today and yesterday.
Panasonic mentions clearly 224W/kg and LG is even clearer and apart from mentioning 240w/kg they give a detailed table: 10A -> 9.8W, 20A ->9.2W

You are mixing power density and power output. They are not the same thing. Watts and watt-hr are not the same thing.

 

[TheLightSpeed!]

Blah blah blah. Tested at 52 minutes. Who cares. Do all the research you want. Doesn't change anything

 

[gigelu]

I don't think we are, what revision and date is yours?
I specifically remember the reference and max capacity being 3500, and typical based on average sampling cells being manufactured being 3450. Then again if you shop for this battery you will also see some seller claiming 3500 and some claiming 3450.

I was reading these:

https://www.nkon.nl/sk/k/ncr18650ga.pdf
www.hurt.com.pl/prods/bat/_li_ion/ncr18650ga.pdf
https://www.nkon.nl/sk/k/hg2.pdf

 

[gigelu]

Blah blah blah. Tested at 52 minutes. Who cares. Do all the research you want. Doesn't change anything

It's great if you can fly 52 minutes.

But the question is: can you get more out of these batteries? For example, if you combine chemistries, it looks that you'll be leaving 40% of energy unused.

 

[sprtbkrydr]

Two of you go back and forth like a married couple filling the thread up, lol.

Now WHO is it that's acting like a married couple and filling up the thread??

 

[sprtbkrydr]

we can clearly see that the above battery has 9 cells

The pack has 6 cells not 9 as you noted.

 

[ScottJD]

Now WHO is it that's acting like a married couple and filling up the thread??

LoL, I don't know what your talking about.
That reminds me, hmmmm. Wait.