Posts in Category: Power Supply

Battery upgrade for Parrot Rolling Spider!

So I was able to snag one of the little Rolling Spider qucharging lipoads off a guy on Craigslist for $25!  Figured something would be wrong and sure enough, the battery was junk.  So I tried to save the battery…recharging lipos that are below 3.3v is risky sometimes but this seemed to charge fine once I got it up to 3.3.

RS_inFlightOnce I got it charged it powered on fine and I was able to take it for a quick flight!  Buuutt…the battery lasted like 15 seconds.  I was able to grab a quick picture during flight though!

So…I decided to see if I would figure out what the battery leads do to potentially wire up a better battery to it.  You can take off the “face” of the spider and then unscrew the bottom piece.  Getting the board out, you have to bend the LED “eyes” up a little so be RS_underbellycareful when doing that.  I was able to get the board out and solder some wires on to the “inside” leads.  Looks like the lead closest to the side (if you’re looking from the top and the “eyes” facing up, it would be the right) is the positive and the other 2 RS_new_wiresseems to be ground (-).  I wired all 3 just in case.  It was a pain as I’m not very good at soldering and ended up accidentally putting a glob of solder connecting both negative leads.  I had to use my dremel and cut it out. I’m amazed I didn’t cut something else by accident.

Once I got the wires done, I found that I just use the positive and the opposing ground (not the middle) is all it needs to power on!  All I had were 2 cell lipos so I rigged it to the top.  Needless to say, it was too heavy but it worked!!!  Pretty excited! Â Looks like I’ll be purchasing some 1s lipos in the near future.  =)

RS_new_wires_2RS_new_wires_3

External Power Supply on older iMacs!

So, I got an older g5 iMac for free from my brother-in-law because it was acting up on him. When I first got it, it worked fine for me! But after a few months, it would just start shutting down randomly…and eventually it wouldn’t turn on at all.