I was looking for last minute no bid bargains on Ebay and ran accross a parallel charging board.It has ports for up to 6 batteries and balance plugs.They claim it will charge in a shorter amount of time and that the board will handle 30A constant charging current.The item no. is 330569825849.Has anybody used one of these because it sure would be nice to charge up to 6 batteries at once.You would almost never be waiting on the charger to finish so you can go fly.The real kicker is they are less than $20.00.Do they work and should I get one???Thanx,Jeff

It needs a balanced charger that can deliver enough current to charge several packs at once. 4 packs @ 4amps = a 16 amp charger.  It also straps all of the batteries in parallel.  I am not sure how you balance cells in parallel.  It may work but - what do I know.

I'd go look on the RC forums and see if you can find anything.

I design circuits, and I know a little bit about charging batteries (although it's been a long time since I've designed a battery charging circuit for money).  So, calculate the size of the grain of salt with which you want to take the following statements.

I think this would work.  Plugging the cells in parallel shouldn't hurt: a discharged cell and a fully charged cell are pretty close together in voltage, so you're not going to cause huge currents to flow (unless you plug in a battery that's fried, in which case it may take it's friends with it -- but that's unlikely).

The one real drawback that I can see is that you have no control over how the current is steered.  That means that, in theory, one highly discharged pack could get all of the current from the charger during the initial constant current charge interval.  If the charger were delivering enough current for the whole array of packs, you might push too much current through the one pack.  That's easy enough to protect against: don't set the charge current at more than any one pack can stand.  You'll lengthen the constant current charge phase a bit, but that's not what takes the most time anyway.

Had I a need to charge so many packs at once I could see buying (or making) one of these.

Hi All,After doing a bit of research I ordered one.I usually do not charge at greater than 1C to keep my batteries from getting warm while charging.My power supply and charger will easily charge 2 3500 MaH packs at a time at that rate and if I stick to charging 2 from the same ship,timer,pattern,ect. hopefully I won't run into the voltage mismatch problems.If I can only charge 2 at a time it still cuts my charging time in half and that is worth $20.00 to me.I will keep everyone posted if it works or not.Jeff

Hi William,Thanx for the concern.I am sorry if I misled but my batteries don't get warm.I am still new to the whole ECL experience and just thought the 1C rate to be safer.After reading the replies I decided to do an experiment.I have an ARF Pathfinder converted to E-Power with what I call CHAS (CHeap Ass Setup).It consists of a Turnigy 3548-1100kv motor($20.00),Mystery 40A ESC($23.00),Turnigy 4S 3000MaH 20C Battery($22.00),and a Hubin FM-0c timer($13.00).I wanted to see how close the voltages and MaH usage would be after a few similar flights.I flew a dozen flights using 3 batteries with 4 flights each.The prop was a stock APC 11X5.5EP @ 9800 RPM on 60' Eye to Eye lines.The timer was set for 3 1/2 minutes.I fly Beginner PAMPA and need the practice for the nats. so I flew the beginner pattern for each flight and the remainder of the flight time was spent practicing specific manuvers.The FM-0c burps for a second 5 seconds before it shuts down so you can prepare for landing.The CHAS performed the same every flight and the ending voltage and the MaH usage was very similar after every flight.The voltage was from 15.27 to 15.31 volts at the start of the charge and the MaH put back in ranged from 1560 to 1587MaH.Just a simple experiment but I think the voltages are close enough I won't have any ill effects.I have a cell checker and will check them from time to time to make sure the cells are balancing properly.Finally getting my Pathfinder put back together and flying well is just an added bonus!!!Jeff