Re: drone battery question

[davidhk129]

How do the drone makers decide which battery capacity applies to which drone ?
Example : I have a Syma X5C-1. It comes with a 3.7v 500mah lipo battery. Flight time is too short. About 6 minutes.
So, I bought a patch of 3.7v 700mah batteries.
Flight time is still too short to my liking..... about 8-10 minutes.
So, I took a chance and inserted a 3.7v 1800mah battery.
It worked fine. I have not run the drone till "low battery" signal appears. But it ran longer than 10 minutes. There seems to be no danger of running the drone with a much more "powerful" battery, as long as the voltage is the same.

So, my question is : Why does the drone maker/manufacturer select a battery that can last only 6 minutes when there are other batteries that can run longer, much longer ? Who wants to change or recharge a battery every 6 minutes ?
Price ?

 

[wafflejock]

How do the drone makers decide which battery capacity applies to which drone ?
Example : I have a Syma X5C-1. It comes with a 3.7v 500mah lipo battery. Flight time is too short. About 6 minutes.
So, I bought a patch of 3.7v 700mah batteries.
Flight time is still too short to my liking..... about 8-10 minutes.
So, I took a chance and inserted a 3.7v 1800mah battery.
It worked fine. I have not run the drone till "low battery" signal appears. But it ran longer than 10 minutes. There seems to be no danger of running the drone with a much more "powerful" battery, as long as the voltage is the same.

So, my question is : Why does the drone maker/manufacturer select a battery that can last only 6 minutes when there are other batteries that can run longer, much longer ? Who wants to change or recharge a battery every 6 minutes ?
Price ?

Yah imagine its just another cost benefit analysis and some guesswork to maximize profits, margins are pretty slim when there isn't any secret sauce to make one mfg stand out. That said there's also going to be more stress on motors pulling more weight up means running at higher rpm to create more lift and there is going to be some trade off in manuverability the higher mAh packs will get more flight time till the weight outweighs the extra capacity of lift of the motors/props.

Ecalc.ch is a nice site for checking flight times given various setups can see there how many cells stacked in series or extra capacity you can add in mAh before it becomes detrimental given a particular set of motors props etc.