on-board lipo low voltage alarm

[aconsola]

I've been contemplating the switch to lipo, but one of the things hoolding me back is the number of esc's I have in various models, none of which have any low voltage cutoff to protect the battery.
I found these little devices on ebay and figured I would give them a try.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250423281648

They come loose packaged with no instructions. There are 4 input pins on the board, with the outside pins marked + and-. The alarm works with either 2s or 3s batteries. it plugs directly into the balance port. For a 2s battery only 3 of 4 pins are needed, the plug must be offset to the - side or it will not work.

It is small and can easily be attached to the battery with velcro or double sided tape. The one pictured is ofset to the side as my dirt oval car uses a velcro strap down the center to mount the battery(I hate strapping tape!!)

It is hard to tell in the pictures, but with a fresh battery plugged in the green led's light up(2 for a 2s, 3 for 3-s).
once the battery gets to the low voltage cutoff point it will sound a shrill alarm, and the red led's come on(red led's show as clear in the photo). Supposedly it will activate if any of the individual cells go below 3v. My packs are fairly new and when I tested it out, both hit the voltage at the same time, so I cannot confirm how well it works for individual cells.

One tip I have is to use a sharp x-acto knife to neatly trim the shrink wrap from the center of the black speaker thing, which makes it signifigantly louder. I ran this pack in my clodbuster and the sound was very noticeable over the noise that the truck makes when running. the alarm was easily heard over my 2 kids bickering about who was going to get to drive it next.

In addition to the backyard user, this would be great for practice sessions on race cars using older brushed speed controllers with lipo batteries, where it is easy to lose track of how long you have been actually running the vehicle. It can easily be removed for the races as it would not be needed for a 4 minute run. at 4.5g it is unlikely to throw off yor setup when removed

overall it seems well worth the $5

[scr8p]

and a fraction of the price compared to the novak doo-hickey.

[Dieselpower]

They work great for slash spec racing as well, as the XL-5 is not compatible with the Novak LVCs.