4 ms·

For anyone that has experience with various types of fliers like this, why does battery life suck so much and are there any options that can be used to extend i

For anyone that has experience with various types of fliers like this, why does battery life suck so much and are there any options that can be used to extend it very significantly? Is it a matter of needing to invent better batteries, would reducing weight be the best option, or does it need to run off of some different fuel source to improve? I guess my question really is: will this improve over time, or is there some real stumbling block that's holding that back?

noonespecial 14y ago
The power/weight ratio. Particularly the energy density of available batteries. Unless batteries can be given a much greater stored energy capacity per unit weight, "toy" flight will be the only kind of battery powered flight possible.
niels 14y ago
In the FPV community it's not uncommon to get +1 hour flying times. But the planes are of course bigger than the dragonfly. The battery types used is Lithium polymer battery. Some people add solar cells on their plane to extend their flying times. This guy uses a combination of a glider and solar cells to fly for +5 hours http://fpvlab.com/forums/showthread.php?8311-New-round-trip-world-record-111-222-Km!!!&p=141823&viewfull=1#post141823 http://fpvlab.com/forums/showthread.php?8311-New-round-trip-...
dharma1 14y ago
this: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/424996/why-your-battery-life-is-terrible-in-one-handy-chart/ http://www.technologyreview.com/view/424996/why-your-battery... There hasn't been much improvement in battery energy density over the past 10 years. There are some interesting developments going on promising 3x-30x improvement on li-ion, but none of it has emerged yet. When someone finally cracks this, it will have disruptive effects on mobile computing to electric cars to renewable energy storage and a million other fields.

4 ms·

For anyone that has experience with various types of fliers like this, why does battery life suck so much and are there any options that can be used to extend i

by dave_sullivan 14y ago

noonespecial 14y ago
The power/weight ratio. Particularly the energy density of available batteries. Unless batteries can be given a much greater stored energy capacity per unit weight, "toy" flight will be the only kind of battery powered flight possible.
niels 14y ago
In the FPV community it's not uncommon to get +1 hour flying times. But the planes are of course bigger than the dragonfly. The battery types used is Lithium polymer battery. Some people add solar cells on their plane to extend their flying times. This guy uses a combination of a glider and solar cells to fly for +5 hours http://fpvlab.com/forums/showthread.php?8311-New-round-trip-world-record-111-222-Km!!!&p=141823&viewfull=1#post141823 http://fpvlab.com/forums/showthread.php?8311-New-round-trip-...
dharma1 14y ago
this: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/424996/why-your-battery-life-is-terrible-in-one-handy-chart/ http://www.technologyreview.com/view/424996/why-your-battery... There hasn't been much improvement in battery energy density over the past 10 years. There are some interesting developments going on promising 3x-30x improvement on li-ion, but none of it has emerged yet. When someone finally cracks this, it will have disruptive effects on mobile computing to electric cars to renewable energy storage and a million other fields.