running a wii with a battery

[collinE]

you need two PCB's for two sets of batteries. The regulator would have a hard time knowing if the cell is charged right if two are wired to each spot. Wire three cells to each one and then wire those two sets together.

[HotDog-Cart]

I was talking to Palmertech, and he is the one who told me that the Wii would run off of 11.1V

[palmertech]

Yup.

[OMGpedobear]

he quoted it , i posted it, to clear that up . charging lipos in parallel is difficult, i know ti can be done but the cells need to be matched so one isn't stronger than the other 2, i don't know how this is done but spark fun sell a 3 cell 3.7 V pack with 3 matched lipo cells in parallel. If you run it from a 3 cell lipo you don't need a regulator due to the low voltages the wii can run at, your screen may be very fussy on voltage however so have your screen and wii on a variable power supply or even a a big lead acid a battery and a multimeter and measure the voltage at which it stops working.

[Cojiro]

so I will be needing something like this?

[collinE]

that would be the safest and best way

[Cojiro]

cool, thanks. my last question is about letting the battery run to low. how dangerous is this? what exactly will this do? would running the battery until the wii shuts off be bad for it? i hadn't even thought this would be a big deal until it was mentioned. what exactly should i do?
-thanks

[OMGpedobear]

nothing really bad will happen, you will just find that if you run it down below 9 volts it wont take a charge again and is as good as useless . You may get away with it once or twice but the further you discharge it the more damage is done. If i where you id turn the wii of at 10 volts, different models of wii will have different power requirements, mine just happened to reliably shut off at 9.3 volts, your could be different as i bought a wii only a few weeks after they came out so mines pretty old now . My advice would be to build a small 5 quid multimeter into the design somewhere and keep it on 20 volts, keep the screen visible and get into a habit of checking it, should you forget the wii will turn itself off (hopefully) as a last resort before the battery gets damaged, Also as the wii uses solid state flash memory, turning it off by cutting its power isnt a very good idea as you are risking corruption which would render a system like the wii useless as there's no way of replacing the memory (as you could with a ps3 or 360). im working on a voltage divider to monitor the voltage of the sla and shut the wii down properly before bad things happen, the theory is the same so ill psot a svhematic and code when its done.

[collinE]

no no no no no.

the protection circuit prevents over-charging as well as over-discharging. You don't need to build a meter or worry about checking it. The power will get cut automatically if the cell runs too low.

edit: speaking specifically about the battery. I know nothing of this Wii memory stuff.

[thetwoj1014]

no no no no no.

[HotDog-Cart]

So, can this run off of 11.1v or not?

[collinE]

if this is true

The wii will power on at the lowest of 12.1 volts but if powered on will go as low as 9.3 volts before it stops working.

then the logical conclusion would be yes. A fully charged 11.1v lipo will hold a full charge over 12v. As it runs down, the voltage drops. You may not be able to start it unless it's got a pretty good charge still, but once it's turned on, you can play until the battery goes dead.

assuming that statement is true, of course.

[Cojiro]

alright my last question:
is it safe to charge and play at the same time?

[OMGpedobear]

no no no no no.

the protection circuit prevents over-charging as well as over-discharging. You don't need to build a meter or worry about checking it. The power will get cut automatically if the cell runs too low.

edit: speaking specifically about the battery. I know nothing of this Wii memory stuff.

I know, the pcb protects against over and under charging but the question i was answering was about under charging. I think you guys have the wrong idea about these pcb's, they are found already incorporated into 95 % of multi cell lipo batteries, THEY ARE AN ABSOLUTE LAST RESORT and should not be relied upon to charge your batteries, they should be used with a proper lipo charger and if its more than a 3 cell pack it should definitely be used with a balancers, it is not safe or good for your batteries to just shove 12 volts in there and hope for the best, yes it will cut power to your batteries before they explode charging them, but a proper lipo charger does a whole lot more than this. Those pcbs are designed to be used with a proper charger and take a very passive approach to charging, stopping things at there very very limit. So use a multimeter and a proper charger NOT A POWER SUPPLY. These pcbs vary between manufacturers and some do more than other but they are always found in batteries in model plane lipo and in batteries in consumer devices, but they still need a charger.
EDIT:
those pcbs will cut power just before the battery gets damaged, if you want a good number of cycles out of your battery you have to be nice to it and stop discharging it before that point. Sure leave the pcb in there just in case once or twice you forget but you should really have something that either warns you or turns the wii of properly before it just dies. Also the wii will run just fine from an 11.1 V lipo. with no regulator.

[hailrazer]

they should be used with a proper lipo charger

QFT