SUPERCAPACITOR powered drone
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- Опубліковано 25 кві 2018
- Can a SUPERCAPACITOR, marketed as a high-discharge energy source be the ultimate battery for a racing drone? No. No it can not.
For the sake of complete information:
We charged our 7-cell, 200F supercapacitor pack to maximum allowed voltage seconds before taking off. The VTX and camera were running from a separate, tiny li-po for the purpose of recording the crash when the supercap is empty. A 4-cell 400F pack was also tested, with mixed results - a little more flight time, but much less power and some stability issues. Not so "super" for this application. - Наука та технологія
Use recharge pads. Super-capacitor recharge time is nearly instantaneous and the energy density practically never degrades relative to the best battery technology. Product reliability may be the second biggest sale winning criteria after cost. The size and weight will improve with new tech on the horizon. Keep it up DroneLab. Thank you for the demo.
and if you have a supercapacitor, without consuming energy it discharges more quickly than a battery?
1:35 damn I want a calculator like this
you got a new sub, by the way
Build one. Just add one keypad to one old till screen, mix in youtube editing magic and your done.
I would love to have shown up to school with that calculator to math class...
@@aomanchutube You can probably build one like this with an arduino, a junk cash register and probably some extra parts. I made mine using video editing, because I'm lazy 🤷♂️
😂😆dat calculator got me
LMAO!
What if you used a smaller supercap, and used it in combination with a regular battery for occasional bursts of energy beyond what the battery can supply? (charging the supercap with spare energy whenever the drone isn't pulling as much as the battery can supply and the supercap isn't already full)
I want to try this. Do you know someone that tried ?
I just thought of the same... N been hunting around n stumbled on this video.. why hasnt anyone done a cap/bat hybrid like they do for offgrid solar system
Battery cap hybrids do exist, they are generally two separate cells so you can easily make your own if you know what you're doing
@@CnRSPACE The "know what you're doing" part is really important; avoiding burning your house down important.
use them for noise filtering :D haha
lmaooo
Yeaahhh awesome video demonstration, Super Capacitor POWEEEEEERRR comes to life when you pair a battery + supercap together! Just the supercapacitors itself, unfortunately can’t do much... great demo!!
yes but the ESR of most supercapacitors is not much better than a decent lipo. the benefits are just not there yet.
That answers that question for me!...great video, straight to the point with no time wasting. Thanks.
Glad you like it. We value our viewer's time more than our watch time statistics :)
super capacitors charge a lot quicker
I believe they can discharge / dump all their energy way faster than batteries too.
Retired Shitposter yes they can! 🙂
Yes, you can charge and discharge them much faster than batteries. Thats exactly what it meant when he told in that videa, that they tolerate higher currents for charging and discharging.
The other reason and big disadvantage is, that they also can me charged much faster, because they store much, much less energy than a same sized battery.
As he submitted in that video himself, it was very obvious, that this project doesnt make any sense at all.
A Supercapacitor can deliver higher currents than the normal Lipo batteries of thois drone. But if the motors of this drone would use higher currents, they would destroy the Lipo batteries.
So that project was nothing else than replacing the normal batteries, by some that look bigger but have a much smaller capacity.
Great myth buster ! Thanks a lot for this video !
I like how at 1:50, you removed the bigger battery for that surprise effect. P.S. To get more energy storage, you should have connected all the capacitors in parallel, and run the discharge through a boost converter. That way, you get the same power, but more energy storage.
Yes, I do most things in life for comedic effect. The energy is the same when connected parallel or series. A boost converter chip could however help with making the power delivery more stable (instead of a significant drop-off with dropping voltage as the caps discharge), but to match the power output of the caps (2kW!) that would have to be a *massive* booster.
@@dronelab1280 oh crap, yeah, my error. E=0.5CV^2, hence even in series, when the voltage doubles and capacitance halves, the energy stored is twice that compared to one capacitor of the same type. I would still use the boost converter to cut corners on the price, instead of splashing loads on high voltage batteries.
I mean boost converter with a low voltage, high capacity, high discharge battery.
That video deserves a million views.
Hi mark from dronelab! Great video I liked AND subscribed! I had a similar but different idea on powering a quad from something other than a lipo!
Why is this channel so small? awesome videos need more subscribers!
Great video...
I had dreams...
You got a new sub :)
Could be used to smooth power spikes in some instances
A while back miniquad test bench had some strange results. In short, it appeared that a few motor/ESC combinations were much more efficient at mid power levels when run on a lab power supply than when a LIPO pack was in parallel with the lab power supply. They didn't really investigate why they got
these results. My suspicion is that the ESC is rectifying back EMF produced by the motor and feeding it back into the power source (battery) during part of the rotation. This energy would charge the battery to some degree however it is almost immediately going to be discharged which means the main effect is going to be heat and possibly damage from momentary over current and/or over voltage
I think that if we could isolate these back EMF spikes and dump them into a resistor instead of the battery pack the result would be a small increase in overall efficiency (due to less heat) and a slight increase battery pack cycle life. Obviously dumping that energy somewhere we can reuse it would be even better.
Accomplishing any of this is going to require at least some more logic in the ESC. But the potential benefits could be pretty big. Flight time might not improve, at least initially, but we'd see less electrical noise overall. This may help enable denser FC stacks and reduce the needed height of GPS stalks, both of which would improve aerodynamics. Other possible benefits could be cooler motors, and we could almost certainly increase the number of usable cycles in a battery pack.
Thats a very interesting topic to investigate! Thanks for the hint, we'll see if we can look into this deeper.
Anything that would improve the usable cycles in batteries would be a blessing. It feels so wasteful to recycle yet another battery that only did 50-100 cycles :/
I want to know how to build a
POS calculator.
Due to our limited budget of $0, this one was built using video editing D:
@@dronelab1280 lol
Maybe Arduino though.
Can you not make a cirquitbord with caps that will be charged by the lipo? And if you need the boost you can use them paralel to the lipo?
What is the weight of that super cap pack? Also, would like to see it being used in parallel with lipos. Best of both worlds, for those punch-outs, the caps would be supplemental to the lipos.
Paralleling supercaps with lipos still won't improve performance, our 340g supercap pack had only about 120A maximum current, so much *less* than an equivalent size lipo. You're simply better off paralleling a lipo, with more lipos :D
I'm curious, how did you go about measuring the maximum current output of the super caps? I feel like you should be able to get more than 120A out of them.
What if you use them in combination with batteries ?
That calc is legend 😂
where can i find those small balance board ?
KEEP ME UPDATED ON THIS PROJECT
Use a super cap WITH a lipol to take off the strain of high current when punching... Maybe even use an 8c battery with a supercap to compliment it....
Increase capacity decrease heat
I didn't stress this enough in the video, but the high current from the supercap was *worse* than from a good (65C) lipo of the same weight. So there is no point in using a supercap in compliment with a lipo, you're better off using a bigger lipo.
dronelab i only need 35c with a 3s 2200mah so could be usefull
Maybe if they were cheaper than a 35C battery, but they simply aren't, by far. To complement an 8C 2200mah 3s and be able to get the same current as from a 2200mah 35C, you'd need a pack of 6x100F supercaps in series. (The pack on the video is 7x200F). That's 116g and would cost almost 30euro. So it ends up being heavier and more expensive than just getting a 2200mah 35C.And you'd only get that "boost" for 5-10s, instead of having that current anytime.
dronelab i only need it for 5 - 10 seconds and adding solar cells would also help my vtol
@@dronelab1280 I came to the same conclusion when I did a research project for a startup at a university. you can get super low ESR super caps but they are cost prohibitive for most applications.
have you tried graphene super caps
Can you tell me if there's anyway to combine battery and supercapacitors ???? Thanks
What about 7 smaller ultracapacitors that works hybrid with a lithium ion 4s pack ?
Any thoughts on how supercap(s) parallel to batt would assist peak current?
Compared to a very good lipo (like a 60-75C one), it's not worth it. Such a lipo can provide more current on its own, than a supercap of the same weight. A cap could significantly help a lower discharge pack (like a 5C metal cased 18650 cell), and such a combo would last many more charge-recharge cycles, but that's not the crazy raw power that we are aiming for.
NICE Calculator :)
can u add pv panel to recharge supercap as it charges fast.
would it help ?
🤔That's a novel though. Well, unlike regular rechargeable batteries supercaps *can* reacharge fast, as in, they can accept a lot of power while recharging, but that power needs to come from somewhere. And while it's easy to make a powerful AC/DC supply, a high power PV panel would simply have to be very large to collect enough sunlight.
For reference, the 10 second flight from the video consumed 1.37Wh of energy, and a 10x10cm solar panel (a size that would fit comfortably on that drone) produces about 1.8W of power in full sunlight. So it will take 1.37Wh/1.8W = 0.76 *hours* (~45 minutes) to recharge between such flight.
To recharge in 10 seconds, the solar panel would have to produce 1.37Wh / (10/3600)h = 493W, so it would need to be 2.7 square meters large (the size of a bed, roughly)
Totally agree on normal flight a supercapacitor wouldn't be a good fit. But what if it was made a game around the short fly-time and the supershort charging time? A race to stop and charge at multiple pitstops (if its possible to achieve 1min flight time with other propellers and motors) :)
Yeah, that could work, and be a lot of fun. Might be difficult to get an entire minute of flight, but the recharging could happen in as little as 10-20 seconds! And the capacitor should last a lot of charge cycles.
@@dronelab1280 I have little to no knowledge with supercapacitors, but regular capacitors can charge as fast as you can supply the energy (ideally). Wouldn't another supercapacitor bank be able to charge the drone within less than a second (to 50%, unless you increase the supply voltage from the charging bank)? I would love to see a drone race where you have to be the fastest at accurate landing and reach all the "checkpoints" to charge!
@@ArneVelle In practice there is a limit to how fast you can charge any capacitor - they always have some resistance (noted as "ESR") which will limit the charging current. On a ceramic cap that can end up with a minimum charging time of microseconds or even nanoseconds, but on a supercap it will usually be several seconds.
@@dronelab1280 Thank you, I learned something new today :-) Will look up further information on this!
What if you had put tiny solar panels on the drone I heard super capacitors charge rapid fast
Did you try eg Al Air battery ?
I used them in a hybrid system. Lipo and super capacitor. Works great.
I'll believe it when I see it (and measure it), because so far the numbers suggest that this does not outperform high discharge rate (75C) lipos in therms of peak current and capacity per weight. The only benefit (and with that, the reason for these capacitors to exist) is longevity, that RC vehicles don't consider a priority by any stretch.
Ur the man ive been looking for the past two hours since this idea came in my head where can i contsct u
@Nush Rajabdeen I've had to modify my hybrid version a little. The super capacitors work great(with fast charging also), but after a year of flying, I've had to add standard capacitors to keep the discharge rate from dropping because of the slow super capacitors. Now, my batteries have a charge in connection and a discharge into drone connection. I had to 3d print a new top cover for the batteries to keep it looking good. From charging port to 3 super capacitors to balance board, then 3 more super capacitors next, then 3 lipo batteries, then 6 regular low esr capacitors to the drone connector port. Be careful with the wiring, and make sure you have a hobby grade battery charger. Feel free to modify it to your own standards. Just make sure that everything is "mostly" discharged when building the battery. I know a guy that uses 6 lipo batteries, but it takes forever to charge and is a little heavier than mine, and we can fly about the same amount of time. I'm working on a new battery now that can charge the battery while flying.
What if you ran a lipo into the super capacitor and Drew you current through the capacitor, would you get more punch
You would not. The supercapacitor offered less punch than a good (60C) LiPo of the same weight. Our huge 7cell supercap only offered a max punch of 120A, which can be easily achieved with a smaller 4S 2000mAh Lipo. So if you combine that supercap with a 4s 2000mah, you would get a total of 240A punch, but if instead you use a 2s 4000mah lipo you would also get 240A punch, but in a smaller, lighter battery and with double the flight time.
So no hybrid system,lol,
what if Lipo plus a super cap
This should work great as a high current buffer to your actual battery
Try putting the super cap in parallel with a lipo battery.
Nici vid very cool calculator
Enjoyed the vdo, had fun watchin it, by the way, whats the cost of single Supercap 4f you showed at very beginning??
That exact one might be a bit old and no longer available, but you can get a new (better) one for about $3-4. By "better" I mean lower ESR, so it can charge and discharge faster.
@@dronelab1280 okei, thanx, well 3$ is expensive....
Can you add a battery and the cap together and redo the test, please. I think the caps will give you the punch power and recharge on low demand.
I think it would be suitable for a vtol fixedwing to perform a jumpstart 👍
That's a very neat idea! And the cap can be recharged during flight from the main battery, to perform a vertical landing.
That’s cool and more environmentally friendly but very short flight
What about using them to protect the lipo?
NEVERMIND!
Can u explain the calculation of supercapacitor us F -> wh.
verses lipo Xs XXXXmAh XXc -> wh. I am interested in formulas.
Further more, would using high discharge caps parrellel with ESCs (between each ESC and distributor board help with lessen the noise of ESCs.
Obviously application should help out with RF circuitry (noise/interference) for both control and video
The energy of a capacitor is expressed in Joules as U^2 * C / 2 (voltage squared, times capacity in [F] divided by 2). A watt-hour is 3600 watt-seconds, and a watt-second is a joule. So a 200F 2.65V supercapacitor is 2.65^2*200/2/3600 = ~ 0.2Wh. For a pack of capacitors, it's easiest to calculate the energy in one, and then multiply by the number of them. Note, that in practice you can't use all the energy stored in a capacitor, because at some point the voltage will be too low to run whatever you want to power from a cap. For a drone, you can assume that you get to use ~65% of that energy.
For batteries, voltage * capacity in Ah is watt hours. So a 4S (14.8v) 2200mAh battery is 14.8 * 2.2 = 29.6Wh.
As for using supercapacitors on an ESC, having capacitors does help with the noise, but for that to be effective, the capacitors need to not only have a high enough capacitance, but also a low ESR - they need to be able to respond to the sudden changes in power consumption by the ESC - and this is something supercaps are not good at. Just increasing the capacitance is not the ultimate solution for noise suppression. We will dig deeper into this in an upcoming video.
Try incorporating the supercaps with the lipos (the smaller supercaps) - so your drone motors can wind up faster getting you better acceleration. Caps are faster at deliverying power right? Try to take advantage of that - and hopefully in a race that typically lasts 5-10 minutes - you'll be able to shave off some of your time? Just a thought! Maybe even try going beyond the rating of your motors by a bit - see if they respond better? Good luck.
How many grams for the 7s pack?
What is the power consumption at hover with weight of battery vs that of caps?
The 7s pack was just over 300g (including the protection circuit, wires and wrapping). Normally a drone like that would fly with a ~200g battery, and that would offer a similar maximum current, but a much higher capacity. So we are wasting a bit more current hovering because of the extra mass of the cap, yes, but not that much. We could get the drone to hover with a 50-100g supercap, but then it would only hover for a second before such a cap would be drained.
Can we use it for making electric bicycle? To run a motor of 12v and 240w for time of 5min. Please help.
240W for 5 minutes is 20Wh or 72kJ - that's a lot of energy. Supercapacitors aren't that good at storing energy, you would need a *huge* one to last you the 5 minutes. If you used the capacitors like the bigger ones in your video (2.7V 400F), you would need a pack that is 5 in series (giving 13.5V, which is OK for a 12V motor) and 16 in parallel, so a total of 80 such capacitors! That's a lot, and it would be very expensive. Instead, I would recommend an RC LiPo battery. With a voltage of 11.1V (OK for 12V motor), capacity of 3000mAh or more and a discharge rating of 20C or more. You should be able to get one like that for $20-30. A bigger capacity will give you more ride time (5000mAH will give 10 minutes for example). Note that LiPo batteries are dangerous and sensitive. You *have to* use a special charger, and you *have to* be careful not to discharge them too much. Use a protection circuit or at least a RC battery voltage monitor. Read more about LiPo battery safety and maintenance before using one.
i think the super capacitor have to working with multi battery cell for charging discharging management , for example when you step on electrical car break you got the energy from the motor than you save that energy to the super capacitor than charge on the non using battery cell. or you can fill the electric in super capacitor from battery for full throttle peak current. am i right? im not so sure but i see some diy electrical bike youtuber doing it.
Yes, that’s a much better use for them. Super caps are great when used for their intended purpose like that.
Capasitor not use on rc plane due to weight of capasitor it self, thx for sharing 😁
I love the calculator too. Lmao
omg. I just found this channel and after 10 videos I feel so bad you didn't keep posting. what happened?
Thank you for breaking my hopes and dreams
My hopes and dreams are broken.
Toxicity came
So what r the future for drone battery. Y can the make a micro generator on the drone motor compartment so when the battery Start The drone the motor spin the gen an uses the power to charge the battery while u flying
That’s a hard question. A lot of companies are trying to make batteries better and there is constant but slow progress. In the mean time you could rely on a tiny gas generator (as gasoline has a very high energy density - that’s one it’s used in jet airplanes). Ive heard of this being done, though I imagine it’s only feasible for very large drones.
I kinda struggled reading your comment but I'm guessing you're talking about using a generator spun by the motor to generate electricity? if that's the case then no, that's impossible. it would violate conservation of energy (you can't "create" energy, rather you can only convert it from one form to another).
I was thinking about doing this to supplement a normal quad so it can do bigger bursts but with super caps having a lower energy density than lipos (based on my calculations) i decided it was not worth it. Also it's really expensive...
You mean lower *power* density, right? Because obviously they have a much lower energy density, hence the 10 second flight time, but on top of that, they don't really deliver that much power either. We only got ~120A and our pack was over 300g. High discharge lipos can do much better than that.
Well energy density is what told me not to try it out.. But now that you said that the max amps is only 120A then why bother at all right?
what did you use to get to that conclusion that super caps have less power density than Lipo? What did you use to measure 120A ? You mention in the video that the lipo can deliver 120A also so is that how you get your conclusion? Because, what if you asked MORE CURRENT from the battery and super cap? From my experience the super cap has MUCH higher power density because it can dump it's energy almost immediately without damage.
Jrod FPV:
Just because it can dump the energy immediately, doesn't mean it has a high power density. That's because it never has that much energy to dump in the first place. The 340g supercap pack we had fits approximatly 40x less energy than a same sized lipo. So even if it can discharge it in 2 seconds, it's the same power (in watts) as that equivalent lipo discharging in 2x40=80 seconds. And you can get a lipo that discharges that fast - that would be a 45C rated one.
When there is real graphene(one atom stack of carbon), supercapacitors would be really awesome that they last longer.
When I was a kid I had stomper 4X4 trucks. They were cool but ate AA batteries like Shamoo eating herring. Recently I have been thinking you could mount a supercapacitor on one and top it off every few minutes. They could even have a play set where the cars run around a track and pit stop automatically to recharge.
I still have my Stompers! Those were the Bomb! 👍
Can't you bottleneck the energy so it will last longer?
How long did it take to charge the super capacitor pack? Is there any hope in the future of dynamic in flight recharging?
You can charge them in as little as 10-20 seconds, if you have a strong enough power supply.You can charge them mid-flight, thought the energy needs to come from somewhere.
@@dronelab1280 Thanks for the reply, This is very interesting technology, albeit maybe not suitable for a flying machine but would be ideal for other applications where heavy current draw over short periods of time are required, such as a car starter.
why not try wiring a supercap to the lipo battery and to the drone so that it has good power from the lipo and can handle really high amp spikes
Honestly you could but a small battery on it and allow the caps to per use the amps and the battery to supply a constant voyage supply I would like to see how long that would last
We didn't stress this enough in the video, but the maximum current of the supercap isn't bigger than what you get from a *good* lipo (like a 60C one) of the same weight. So combining a supercap with a good lipo gives worse capacity and less maximum current than just using a big lipo. Combining a supercap with a bad (20C) battery would have some benefits, but it's still worse than just a good lipo.
Hi,
I am from a computer science background and I don't have much knowledge on electrical and electronic things.
I have drone which was built by assembling all the drone essential requirements.
I have a battery which is 5200 mah, 11.1v 35C. I think I can continuously fly the drone for 10-15 minutes.
Now I am thinking of another power source , which is tethered drone. I don’t mind drone tethering
I have an idea in my mind to build the tethered drone. I am not sure whether it will work for me or not. Please help me on that.
On the Ground I use AC power supply which is 230 volts and use some 14 - 22 gauge wire for 100 feet and at the drone end convert AC 230 volt to DC 12.5 volt. I mean some kind of adapter(AC to DC , 230 volts to 12 volts 1 amps) I will use. Now I am worried about is the amps which is required by the drone motor. I have a 180000uF 50V Electrolytic Capacitor which weighs about 700 grams. So when the capacitor gets charged from the source side and discharges at the other end.
Will the discharge side able to run the drone motors? Please help me on this.
And I also have some super capacitors, Can I use those capacitors.
I am providing you some link on the capacitors which I have already purchased.
www.electronicscomp.com/180000uf-50v-electrolytic-capacitor-pg-garde-india?search=capacitor&sort=p.price&order=DESC
www.electronicscomp.com/1.5-farad-5.5v-super-capacitor?search=super%20capacitor
Well, if the drone runs for 15 minutes on an 11.1V, 5.2 Amp-hour battery, we can quickly figure out that on average it takes 5.2Amp hours / (15 minutes / 60 minutes) = 21Amps. That's a lot of power to deliver. If you use a 1A power supply to charge up a cap, but then intend to source 21A from that cap, you would only get 1 second of flight for every 21 seconds of charging. I doubt that's what you are aiming for with the tethered approach. The maximum flight time will be limited by the capacitance of that capacitor. We can compute that as well: 180000uF means 0.18 Amps can be provided for 1 second, for each 1V of allowed drop between "full" and "empy". Full is 12.5V, empty is probably 9V, so 0.18A/s * (12.5V-9V) / 21A = 30 milliseconds. At 1.5F that's 0.25 seconds, not great.
There go my hopes and dreams.
Why is the capacitance still 200F? If capacitors are wired in series than the total capacitance is less than half of the capacitance of any individual capacitor. Or is it different with supercaps?
The capacitance is indeed lower - 1/7 for 7 cells in series, so 28.6F, but in that scene we are calculating the total energy. The approach we took is calculating the energy of one cap (voltage squared times capacitance divided by 2) and multiplying by the 7 cells. This yields the same result as first calculating the parameters of the total pack, (28.6F at 18.55V) and then using that to calculate the energy capacity (18.55F^2 * 28.6V/2 = 4920J, with a tiny rounding error)
What about supercapacitor with flux capacitance?
Luong Cong Tu maybe learn about real physics before spouting hollywood bollox....
so it is good for long range :)
What drone Is this 0:59?
Please, link the (BLUE) capacitor link!!!
It's the 200F one from this datasheet: datasheets.avx.com/AVX-SCC.pdf You can get it from various electronic component distributors like Mouser or Farnell
Try a supercap lipo hybrid
Try pairing the caps with a boost voltage converter. SC voltage degrades linearly so you will be out of usable range far before you're out of power technically.
That would work great for a smaller load, like a server or something, but for the drone, the voltage converter would have to be able to handle 100A at 15V, or 1.5kW! That would need to be quite a big converter, probably even outweighing the capacitors themselves :(
@@dronelab1280 Overvolt then step down.
@@omegahaxors3306 Even as a step-down, that converter would need to be massive (100's of grammes) to handle the 100A+ a drone needs. Not worth it, compared to just having more capacity in this application.
@@dronelab1280 Probably not worth it anyway since supercaps are really heavy per unit energy. No good for a flying thing.
Yo this was my idea haha
I got 10 seconds from 6 500 farad caps in a fun cub, enough to get off the ground.
What about the price for supercapacitor vs the same capacity lithium ion?
The supercap is significantly more expensive (over 10x more) vs lithium of same capacity (note that the supercap will be physically much bigger), and about 5x more expensive than a lithium of the same maximum current. The only advantage of the supercapacitor is the number expected charge-discharge cycles, where a typical RC lipo lasts only about 100 cycles, and a supercap should last 1000s if not 10,000s of cycles.
Effectively you are flying with a 28,6F capacitor as there are 7 200F in series. Only a drone that can operate an 2,7V can fly with 7 200F capacitors in parallel, giving 1400F total capacitance.
Yes, although either way - series or parallel - the total energy stored in the capacitor bank is the same. The Farad is a bit of a confusing unit in that way.
7 in series: 18.9V 28.6F = 18.9^2 * 28.6 / 2 = 5.1kJ
7 in parallel: 2.7V 1400F = 2.7^2 * 200 / 2 = 5.1kJ
The total energy is the same.
Have you guys tried the Chinese 'GTCAP Graphene Supercapacitor battery 2.7V 100,000F' (Or other manufacturer other than GTCAP as there seems to be a few different ones)' capacitors? If you had an optimized drone with a few of those I bet you would have a better result.
It's hard to get good data on them, they tend to not have datasheets, which is never a good sign. The numbers I could find show the same problem we had: not enough power per weight, so they do not look too promising just yet.
@@dronelab1280 I see, and you're right they do look a bit shady... Good ol' China!
But, are you saying that assuming you could get 100KF capacitors of say 700 grams each that it still wouldn't really be worth while using them?
When I think about it 4 of them would already weigh in at 2.8kg and if connected in series would drop the capacitance down to 25KF which would likely not make a whole lot of sense... But perhaps with a DC-DC Boost converter module and a parallel connection it might still last upwards of a minute or two -What do you think?
A DC-DC Boost capable of converting this kind of power (over 3000W?) would weight over a kilogram by itself, so I wouldn't count on that being feasible. Don't worry about the capacitance becoming lower when you connect caps in series - it's just that the "Fahrad" unit of capacitance is weird (It's expressed as charge divided by voltage, so by increasing voltage you decrease 'capacity'), in practice the total energy capacity of 2 capacitors in series is 2x the energy capacity of a single one, so nothing is lost.
Maybe you can connect 4 of them in series and get a working 10.8V system, but at 2.8kg you might as well get a massive lithium battery that will have better performance, both in peak and total capacity. The only benefit of supercapacitors right now is their longevity - they can last 1000x longer. But drone is likely to have a catastrophic crash before it reaches 1000 charge cycles anyway, so I wouldn't see that as a big advantage, and certainly not worth the extra weight.
Thanks a lot for the lovely in depth reply! Really appreciate your time answering my question properly.
Is it good to use Super Capacitors for riding a Gocart? Is it safe?
Depends on how you approach it. You could either:
1. Get a supercapacitor same same physical size as a normal battery. Then you get much less range, or
2. Get supercapacitor that matches the capacity of a battery. It would be much larger, heavier and more expensive, but you get the same range as a normal battery.
In both cases, the supercapacior has one advantage over a regular li-ion battery - it doesn't wear out with time. Li-ions usually last less than 1000 charge cycles, so for a gocart that is driven all the time every day, a supercap might be advantageous. The difference in safety isn't that significant - both are safe, if you follow the correct guidelines.
@@dronelab1280 Thanks, Sir. I also want to ask another question i.e. How much Farad capacitor is suitable for a 2HP motor?
I feel this would be much better on a wing
what about a booster to reduce sag on high throttle inputs... Store energy at low throttle so it doesnt make it fly weird and set them to dump at say 65-75 onward in throttle range. Have them completely on standby at say 50 to whichever you choose as your starting point for boost as to again keep it from flying weird. Unless charging the capacitor would draw too many amps even at low throttle. Idk, just thinking
May it'd only be worth it on 1 and 2s whoop type stuff but it'd still be something interesting. Maybe even just as something you could charge on the ground to help your battery out for even just the first few punch outs or whatever. May even be better off setting it up with amp draw rather than throttle input.
The super capacitor didn't really provide more current (amps) per gram than a good high-discharge LiPo can (like a 65C continuous discharge rate one). The biggest advantage of the cap is it's longevity - it can be charged tens of thousands of times, while a LiPo of this class barely lasts 100 cycles. But that's an advantage sought after in industrial applications and not for racing drones.
I guess a cap can be combined with a low-discharge LiPo (a 5-10C commercial one), to get good peak current and reasonable longevity, but the control circuitry to switch between the battery and capacitor, and to regulate the charging, would be very heavy, as it needs transistors capable of handling the full current of the drone.
@@dronelab1280 I just want to make sure we're thinking the same direction because I'd be more than happy to try with limited skills and resources even if it fails for the time being.
But yeah, I guess really a drone that would fly solely off of the average lipo, but tap into the capacitor for the extra umph on the top end when you ask for it. If I could get away with even 2 or 3 full throttle pulls without being penalized as much on the lipos flight time, that's all I want. Sort like push to pass in indy cars and what not. Sorry if I'm just reiterating and you already understood what I was asking that way. :)
@@dronelab1280 Subbed for the informational reply and good content either way!
Hehehh bes.... hehh ..absoltely best Calculator in the world [laughs]
try to combine Li-Ion like LG HG2 + super capacitor, so it can has high current burst
It would definitely help a standard low discharge battery, but it will still not match the maximum current possibly from a high discharge lipo (60C+) of the same total weight. Although, such a li-ion + supercap combo should have a fantastic longevity - it should last 1000 charge cycles, instead of the ~100 one may expect to get from a high-discharge lipo.
Put a tiny solar panel
your lead wire is too thin to output the amps the super cap can produce
A valid concern, but the AWG12 we used handles almost 200A for short bursts. With such a short length, the wire would catch fire before introducing any significant voltage drop.
With the capacitors fully charged, the current output wasn't bad at all. The drone punched at the full 150A+ its motors can take. But the capacitors drained very fast, dropping the voltage very quickly and in turn, limiting the power.
what about Skeleton's Ultracapacitors
Is that scam to?
Well I wouldn't call supercapacitors a "scam". They are great for some purposes like hybrid cars, metro trains or server power supplies, but they simply aren't good for RC drones. The Skeleton SkelCap has the exact same energy density (energy capacity per kilogram) as the AVX SCC that we used (5.1Wh/kg) , so the flight time would be the same. But it does claim to have a much higher power density (80kW/kg vs our 2.5kW/kg), so in theory it should have a much stronger punch. Unfortunately, not only are the SkelCaps only available in 500F or larger (so an appropriate voltage pack would be gigantic at over 650g!), but also I can't find a single distributor actually selling them. Maybe they aren't on the market just yet?
@@dronelab1280
In your eyes, what kind of battery is the best in the market right now.
Not just for drones.
@@sahinyasar9119 Well, for every application a different battery is best. The Lithium ion based rechargeables are great for portable electronics, and their high-discharge rate variants are great for RC drones, power tools or electric vehicles. But if you need a hybrid bus with regenerative breaking, nothing will beat a super-capacitor because of how many discharge-recharge cycles it can take before it needs replacing. And for long term operating, low-power sensors, a lithium-thionyl chloride cell is by far the best, because it can run for even 20 years without significant self discharging. But a super capacitor has too little capacity to power a drone, and a lithium-thionyl chloride has a very low output power, so they aren't good for other use cases. Every kind has its strengths and weaknesses, so there isn't a single overall "best" one. For most cases though, the Li-Po is most suitable, but there still are valid reasons even for using a good ol' lead acid cell!
@@dronelab1280 thank for your attention
Great video thank you for posting! I love super caps!!! Its exciting to think that we're moving forward with capacitor technology, trying to approach the abuse tolerance of capacitor, with the energy density of batteries. In your calculation of how much energy is in your capacitor, did you account for the fact that the drone cannot use ALL of the energy that is stored in the cap? Once the voltage is too low to fly the drone and it crash lands, there is technically still energy left in the capacitor... Maybe around 50% or so of it's capacity, which is quite a lot! This is dependent on the minimum voltage needed to fly the craft. Caps have a linear discharge curve, which means as soon as you draw power from it, the voltage drops linearly. Unlike a Lipo, where there is more of a complex, but more usable discharge curve.
Here is a graph showing this: www.tecategroup.com/ultracapacitors-supercapacitors/ultracapacitor-FAQ_files/image006.jpg
From this useful website: www.tecategroup.com/ultracapacitors-supercapacitors/ultracapacitor-FAQ.php
What this means is that in order to extract the full energy out of a supercapacitor, we need relatively complicated voltage step up electronics. It would be cool to use super caps in conjunction with Lipos for racing drones to provide a sort of "push to pass" button like Indy car uses! Giving a short, few second burst of additional power.
please add regular battery which gives you the punch without ruining the battery
... Hybrid battery.. but i thought that you could pull more than 120amp peak from the caps..
And with that poor 120A peak, it's not even worth making a hybrid. It offers less peak current than a good li-po of the same weight (Roughly a 65C one).
98% Bratwurst und 2% Sauerkraut!
Use them as emergency power
If you was to use them in line with a battery then you would eliminate battery sag!
Why 200F ? Aren't they marked as 400F ?
Nice spot! We made two battery packs, a 4x 400F in series, and a 7x200F (higher voltage, less capacity). The footage shows both, but the 4x400F was so bad at flying, I decided to not mention it at all and focus only on the better, 7x200F, to keep the video short and simple. Theoretically the 4x400F fits a bit more energy, so on a differently configured drone, with higher KV motors, it might have performed a bit better, but with the parts we had at hand (and did not mind crashing), those were the best results we could get.
supercap on a tiny whoop
I think you need more caps and a bigger drone...just saying
what about the charging time tho XD
Yeah, theoretically we could safely charge that pack in just a couple of seconds, but we don't have a power supply strong enough :(
we need a drone that uses lead acid batts
And we shall call it, the "Lead Zeppelin"!
@@dronelab1280 you are truly something special, but I would like to see it happen
I made my first drone out of stepper motor, it’s movement was very precise 😂
Yup that’s me!
And yes I liked my self :P
Your maths isn't correct, the actual usable energy is much lower because of the way capacitors work. When they reach the minimum voltage usable by your drone they will still have most of their energy left as they can be used down to 0v.
You’re right to point it out, and it makes a somewhat significant difference but it’s far from “most the energy”. Going from 2.65 to 1.3v (as we did here) leaves only 24% left in the cap.
LiPo batteries are lighter than li ion batteries but li ion batteries can save more energy than li po batteries
how does it affect the flight time with battery connected in series?
Yep to get a 10 minute flight you'll need a 168,000 Farads.. Which would be about 24000 7 cell packs, yea that can get heavy.. LOL
And then its so heavy that it needs more power to fly, so even more capacitors! But once some are discharged they can be dumped to lighten the craft, like like a space rocket!
Nooooo