Need a 6V battery pack that lasts long, help?

Okay Im at onlybatterypacks.com (recommend other sites please) and I found a couple NiMH battery packs at 6V ranging from 350mAh to 10000 mAh.

I want a battery pack with a lot of juice and lasts very long, what do I look for? Thanks!

You posted the pertinent information - mAh is the abbreviation for milliamp hours. Take this example below (simplified version)

  1. 500mAh - can draw 500 milliamp for one hour

  2. 1500mAh - can draw 500 milliamp for 3 hours (3 times longer than the first one) or 1500milliamp for 1 hour (supplies 3 times as much power as the first one)

  3. 3000mAh - can draw 500 milliamp for 6 hours (6 times longer than the first one) or 3000 milliamp for 1 hour (supplies 6 times as much power as the first one)

Happy power hunting

Chris

GO with this Lynxmotion 6v 1600MaH battery. Better quality (becuase its from Lynxmotion :smiley: !!) and Its longer lasting.

lynxmotion.com/Product.aspx? … egoryID=48

good price too! :stuck_out_tongue:

Perfect repies!

Ok so larger the mAh, the larger the lifetime of a single charge. More questions:

  1. How do I choose whether the use up all my mAh points in 1 hour or to spread it out between more hours?

  2. If I choose to spend all the mAh within 1 hour, will it power more voltage into the system rather than say 5 hours?

  3. How much is required to power bipeds? Lets say I’m powering 10 servos, how do I know how much my servos require and how much is being used?

  4. Thanks for the link. How long does 1600mAh typically last? I plan to make a good investment on battery so I can reuse later. I feel I must invest more money into a more powerful pack, around $30-50 including the charger. Where can I get the charger btw?

On typical use I think the battery will last about an hour and a half (if I can remember Chungas Battery Experiment correctly). He used this battery continueously on 6V for an hour and a hlaf before it died (I think :laughing: ).

Miliamps are a mesuarement of the volume of electrons going through a wire, while voltage is the amount of pressure. More milliamp hours will not mean more voltage. It means you can draw more power, or the battery will last longer. Also check out the RC guys, they have some really amazing batterys, 2500mah for instance, in the same form factor as the lynxmotion 1600mah battery.

Sweet!

I’m looking to spend around 30 bucks for a single battery, maybe around 3000mAh and up, and the other 20 for a charger. How do I go on about finding a charger? It doesnt have to charge it in 1 hour, it can take 24 hours to charge I dont mind.

just get a simple smart charger if its going to be for batteries such as the regular NICD or NIMH:

lynxmotion.com/Product.aspx? … egoryID=48

or this is great:

Link

bassically same thing but can charge batteries with different heads.

Say I purchase this battery:

onlybatterypacks.com/showite … ID=10414.7

How do I know what connector to choose that will fit into both the charger and the basic atom boards?

I feel it has something to do with this item: lynxmotion.com/Product.aspx? … egoryID=66

“Wiring Harness” - Should I buy 2 of them? 1 to connect the battery to the MINIABB and the other to connect to the SSC-32 (so I require 2 batteries, right?).

As long as it has the Tamiya style connector on it (female) It will work with the connector on the first charger.

this is what the connector will look like on the battery:
lynxmotion.com/Product.aspx? … egoryID=48

Perfect!

“Tamaya Female: Battery Side” is a choice of connectors at the checkout (onlybatterypacks.com/webimag … /10067.jpg).

Alright, since Im powering both the logic and the servos, Ill need 2 battery packs. In order to connect these batteries to the boards’ screw terminals, I need the wiring harness’s right?

yes and yes! That way you can turn them on/off with the switch.

Ah this is all falling in place. I owe you italian_guy229 :laughing:!

lol nothing :wink:

This is my recommendation on a pack:
onlybatterypacks.com/showite … ID=10417.7

This pack is the same weight as the one you linked, but it has 200mah more and can dump 35 amps vs 10 amps.

I would buy the 10000mAh if I could.

But did you notice the length? The 4200mAh you posted is 4.35 inches long, as opposed to the other one which is 3.50 inches long. These things are quite huge…I dont know if my biped will be able to take on the weight.

However, you stated that your link has 35 amps while mine, 10. What is the significance in discharge rates?

For bipeds it’s not really that important. The Bipeds I have built do not take a great deal of current to operate. The Bipeds only draw a couple amps when moving. So the question you need to ask yourself is how long do you need it to work between charges. There is no reason to carry around a 4200mAh pack if it will run the robot for 4 hours when you only need it to work for 1 hour. If you want to ultimate in run time then forget NiMH and go Lithium Manganese!

Ok, you didn’t mention anything about the biped or size limitations in the original post.

Well, you want to make sure the batteries can discharge more current than your circuit is going to draw.

Your needs are going to depend mostly on what servos you are using, the weight of the biped, and what the biped is going to be doing.

If you are using some of the so-called “super servos”, and your biped will be heavy, and it’s going to jump around and do backflips, then 10 amps won’t cut it.

If your biped is smaller, light weight, and will only take leisurely strolls, then 10 amps would be fine.

Oh, and lithium isn’t a great option with standard servos because the packs run in 3.7V increments, so you can’t get a 6V pack.

Good replies!

Robot Dude: I plan to operate my robot for about 2 hours during a performance.

A-Bot: Well I never said anything about Li-Ion much, Im actually shooting for NiMH batteries. I wanted the battery packs + MCU to be its backpack, but I see this is going to be huge.

Mini-ABB + SSC-32 + 2 Battery Packs…is a humongous backpack.

You stated I need more amps if I’m going to be doing more difficult tasks such as backflips. I wont be doing any backflips, but what are you implying about amps and difficult tasks? More amps are required when ____ ? Is it that I need more amps if my servos will be stalling more or picking up heavier loads?

Theres no place to get small batteries for the same power Im assuming?

I never heard of a biped taking 10 or more amps doing anything. Think about it… An 18 servo hexapod can draw around 7 or 8 amps when walking fast because at least three legs, that’s 9 servos are doing a prett fair amount of work. But a biped is different. Infact there is no easy way to make a biped draw that much current. :unamused: A biped doing acrobatics still doesn’t draw very much current because not very many servos are doing much work… :open_mouth: Our 22 servo biped (Pete) can operate for around 30 to 40 minutes using just a 1600mAh pack. Hope this helps…