Greentronic appeared on the market in 2009 and offers a range of product around power supplies (Regulators, Dual supply, booster) for remote control airplanes. Their product has been developed by modelers for modelers which is a guarantee that is has been designed to match our requirements in term of size, efficiency, reliability.

Regmax is a DualBat input booster 1S2P Lipo or LiFe, 3 or 4 Nimh input, 5V5 4A output. Booster means that it is able to elevate the voltage from 3.7 V to 5.5V with a efficiency about 85 % which is pretty good. This device is announced to be compatible with 35, 41 or 2.4 Ghz applications.

Even if such device can be used with any type of battery (NiCd, NiMh, Lipo, etc …), it becomes very interesting when used with new battery cell technology like LiPo or Life where a single cell has a nominal voltage of between 3.2 & 3.7 V.

Given the efficiency of 85% of the RegMax, a LiFe cell of 1300 mAh will deliver 1300 x 0.85 = 1100 mAh. Because of the second and similar battery, the configuration using 1 RegMax + 2 LiFe 1 cell 1300mAh batteries will provide 2200 mAh.

This is interesting because the total weight of such configuration is lower than a 4 Cells NiMh battery !!! In addition, despite the Regmax itself is not tiny, the set is easier to install in small F3B/F/J fuselages with small nose.

The interest of the LiFe technology is their ability to deliver high current without high voltage drop. They also can be charged under high current too. The auto discharge is also good which is clearly a plus for us because you don’t need to charge systematically before to fly.

The redundancy is total. There is no primary and secondary battery. As soon as you unplug a battery the device switches automatically to the second battery. When the 2 batteries are connected and running fine, a green led is ON.

A video is better than 1000 words, so here it is:

Greentronic Regmax from Pierre Rondel on Vimeo.

Greentronic is not only manufacturing this Regmax, but also different other voltage regulators or dual power. They also announced some new products for beginning of 2010, so a visit to their website is worth it !

http://www.greentronic.eu

Features:

• Size: 48x23x7 mm
• Weight: 18 g
• Input Voltage: 3 to 4 Volts
• Ouput Voltage: 5.5 Volts regulated
• Max output current: 4 A
• Price: 63.90 Euros

 

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