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I've been using light bulbs for years to discharge batteries since the old Ni-Cads SCE cells were stored drained. Now with lipo's sometimes I end up with charged packs that I didn't use for some reason or another and need to be put back into storage mode.
My PL8's will do it but internal discharge is limited unless you are regenerative discharging into a LA battery. And the heat generated can't be good for the long life of the chargers.
The pain with light bulb dischargers and lipo's is watching and disconnecting at exactly the right time and not forgetting and ruining the pack. There is a thread I've been following on RCGroups for a DIY disconnect using a CellLog lipo monitor and a relay but I never got around to building one.
Now MYRCMart has come out with these 3 in 1 balancer, discharger, volt meters for up to 6s for $13. They use 3 x 24v bulbs for discharge and you can set the cutoff voltage between 2.0v and 4.2v.
I picked up two of them and made a mount for the bulbs from some angle aluminum. I tried a couple 4s packs that needed to be put into storage and they worked great balancing and discharging down to my set 3.85v faster than I was expecting. Each unit has 3 bulbs that come on as needed. Pretty cool I give it a thumbs up lol. I think I might add a wire mesh cover to make it portable enough to take to a race.
My PL8's will do it but internal discharge is limited unless you are regenerative discharging into a LA battery. And the heat generated can't be good for the long life of the chargers.
The pain with light bulb dischargers and lipo's is watching and disconnecting at exactly the right time and not forgetting and ruining the pack. There is a thread I've been following on RCGroups for a DIY disconnect using a CellLog lipo monitor and a relay but I never got around to building one.
Now MYRCMart has come out with these 3 in 1 balancer, discharger, volt meters for up to 6s for $13. They use 3 x 24v bulbs for discharge and you can set the cutoff voltage between 2.0v and 4.2v.
I picked up two of them and made a mount for the bulbs from some angle aluminum. I tried a couple 4s packs that needed to be put into storage and they worked great balancing and discharging down to my set 3.85v faster than I was expecting. Each unit has 3 bulbs that come on as needed. Pretty cool I give it a thumbs up lol. I think I might add a wire mesh cover to make it portable enough to take to a race.
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