Lipo Conversion Part 2

So I had such great success turning my battery drill into a lipo powered device I thought I'd give something else a go.

I've got a headlight for my mountain bike which has a cree LED in it. Its fantastically bright but its hard to mount it on the handle bars and have it point where I want it to and also the cord is long and gets in the way and finally the battery pack is big and bulky and takes ages to charge. Looks like a good time to break out the lipos and see if I can sold all those problems at once.


Step 1.
The light in its unmodified state.

Step 2.
Cut off the normal plug from the light and solder on a plug that matches the plugs on your lips. I'm using deans plugs here. I chose this 2S 1300mah battery because the voltage the light was supposed to work with (according to the writing on the battery pack)  was was 7V and a 2S is close enough.

Step 3.
Cut and glue a mountain bracket onto your helmet. I did this because mounting it here made a lot more sense to me that mounting it on my handle bars. this way it pointed where ever I wanted it to.

Step 4.
On the back I glued a little bit of foam as padding and a Velcro strap to hold the battery in place and to offset the weight at the front on the helmet.

Step 5.
All ready for riding at night! It charges faster and is way more useful than the original set up. Plus while I was at it I removed the little green LED inside the on button of the light to prevent battery drain when it's not actually turned on. The other good thing about this set up is I can use my lipo checker to see how much charge is left in my battery before using the helmet so I know I've got enough power to make it through the ride. I've also discovered that 3S batteries work with this particular light.

FrSky Taranis Antenna and Sliders Upgrade Part 1

Well if you've read previous articles on this blog you'll know that I can't seem to stop modding my FrSky Taranis. It really seems to lend its self to modification. I've got some more planed as well.

Enough of that though, here's how to upgrade the main antenna of the Taranis and also the sliders. You might want to upgrade the sliders if you bought one before about February in 2014. Until that point they were shipping them with really cheap and nasty feeling sliders on the sides but fortunately you can buy the new sliders from places like Aloft Hobbies pretty cheaply.

Step 1. Things you'll need.
1. A pair of new sliders
2. A 5dB Omni Direction Antenna or A 7dB Patch Antenna
3. A coax cable (I would order this longer one because I ended up cutting the shower one too short and having to use another cable I had lying arund

Step 2. 

Open up the Taranis by removing the screws in the back and take out the sliders and switches at the top left and right. Be careful unpluging these from the main board as they are quite tight. I used a knife to get in and loosen the catches. 

Step 3.

Remove the hot glue blob over the soldered joint with a knife.Mine came off rater worryingly easy.  

Step 4.

Unsolder the coax cable for the antenna that's already there and then remove the main antenna. This will just slide up the top of the Taranis case as long as you use some pliers to squeeze the base of it so the little lugs come free.

Step 5.

Clean up the joint where the cox cable will be soldered on and add a little solder to the ground plates which are the two larger joints beside the little one in the middle which is the what the core wire will be attached to.

Step 6.

Get your coax cable ready. I cut off the little connector because I really don't think i'll be needing to change the connector any time soon so I just prepared it for soldering by feeling back the metallic shielding on the outside and making it into two wound strands which I've covered in solder as well as a little on the core strands to make them easier to connect to the board. 

Step 7.

Hot glue the coax cable into the hole where the old antenna came out of. I put a little bit of scrap wood underneath the hole to stop the glue from running down into the Taranis body

Step 8.

The coax cable hot gluded in place. 

Step 9.

Solder the outer shield joints to one or both of the outside connectors on the board and solder the core wire to the active connector on the board (the one in the middle)

Step 10.

Place a bit of hot glue (and do a better job than they did at the factory) on the joint for the coax cable.

Step 11.

You'll need to take the switches out to remove their wires and plug into the new ones which are attached to the new sliders. 

Step 12.

Put the new sliders back into the case, put the switches back in (make sure you didn't turn them around or put the back in the wrong side) and you're done. :)

Some notes:

One thing which I'm still investigating and testing is that SWR values with the new antennas are a bit higher than they were with the original stock one. I've read on the OpenTx website that this isn't a problem as long as it doesn't go about 50, however to my mind its still indicative of an imperfection somewhere so I shall keep investigating and make some more posts when I work it out.