Regbot maintenance

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Battery maintenance

The battery is nominal 11.1V (3 LiPo cells) and the robot shuts down if below 10V.

NB! the charger cable to the battery (4-wire balance plug) is disconnected on some robots. See Regbot maintenance for more details.

NB2! Connecting the charger, or connecting USB cable while charging, sometimes disturb the processor on REGBOT. Especially if the PC is also connected to 230V.

Battery charge

The battery is a 3-cell Lithium polymer type with a capacity of 0.5 to 1Ah and a nominal voltage of 11.1 V.

Lithium batteries have a longer life when stored at the nominal voltage (50% charged), so we try to keep this when robots are not used.

Lithium batteries will be destroyed or damaged if discharged below 3.2V per cell (9.6V if all cells are equal - and they are typically not).

The built-in charger is of different types (internal), and some of them discharge the battery when not charging. They discharge with between 0.5 to 5 mA. i.e. a fully charged battery is drained after between 200 and 2000 hours. Typically, one cell will be dead after 1-2 months of no use if the charger is connected.

After charging a battery with a leaky charger, remove the charging cable as shown in the figure below.

Figure 1. Some of the chargers destroy the battery when unused for a period of time, so on most robots, the charging cable is disconnected. Reconnect to the charger when needed.

Battery on-time

The robot typically uses 100mA - when not moving - and thus 5-10 hours use on a fully charged battery.