Spirit WAVE: setting and using the LiPo consumption alarms?

[curmudgeon]

Spirit WAVE radio: How are pilots setting and using the LiPo consumption alarm(s)?

I mainly have experience with Jeti/Spirit and Mikado VBar.

Mikado VBar makes it pretty straight forward; you create LiPo "presets" which are stored in the VBC radio. Anytime you power up the Neo/EVO, the radio immediately prompts you to choose which LiPo preset you are using. Then, the radio announces the LiPo capacity from 90% down to 0% in 10% increments based on the allowable used capacity one set up for the particular LiPo.

Jeti/Spirit makes you manually create the alarms. The process is more "involved" than with Mikado VBar, but the possibilities are endless.

I am not clear how to best use LiPo capacity consumption alarms with the WAVE radio. I've entered the LiPo battery data. It looks like I can choose which LiPo batteries I can assign to which helicopter models (to which Spirit unit in reality). The limitation that I am seeing is that the LiPo consumption alarms are limited to choosing only a percentage of the LiPo capacity. In contrast, Jeti allows you to choose actual LiPo mah consumption values as the alarm. Jeti also has community generated Lua scripts offering some cool possibilities as well.

How are WAVE radio pilots setting and using the LiPo consumption alarm(s)?

[ZeXx86]

Hello,

you can enable Alarm at the Battery Manager through one press. Nothing else is needed.
It will create alarm for you. We could eventually set the behavior to be automatic. It is correct the purpose for battery manager is mainly because of cycle counter and alarm.

[curmudgeon]

Hello Tomas,

I am not clear on what you mean by, "you can enable Alarm at the Battery Manager through one press. Nothing else is needed."

I figured out a way to make the battery capacity alarms work similarly to how Mikado does it (announced as a percentage of battery capacity left), as well as a account for each individual battery capacity or state of health. I wrote about it on Facebook, but I will include it here as well.

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It turns out, the WAVE radio does not offer the option to use absolute number mah-based capacity consumption alarms. The WAVE offers battery capacity consumption alarms only as a percent of capacity, not as an absolute mah consumed number. There is wisdom behind using percent-based vs. absolute number mah-based capacity consumption alarms.

I decided to organize my batteries the following way:

I created separate helicopter models and named these helicopters models as per the LiPo batteries I intend to store in the battery folder. In this example, I want to organize 12S 5000mah batteries. I named the model 12S 5000mah. (see attached picture).

On the battery folder, I added 4 batteries, which I named by cell count, capacity, the two batteries I am using (E and F), and brand (Gen for Gens ACE). Since I am using 73% of the capacity stated on the LiPo label, I entered the capacity as 3650mah, which is 73% of 5000mah. The idea behind this organizational method is that it will allow me to adjust the battery capacity as the battery ages in the battery root folder which will in turn apply globally automatically to all helicopter models using these batteries. (see attached picture).

For the actual flying helicopter models, I set up capacity consumption warnings similarly to how VBC does it. However, instead of using 10% increments like VBC does, I personalized the warnings in a way that works better for me. I set up the warnings to 90% remaining, 75% remaining, 50%, 25%, 10%, 3%, and 0% remaining. I prefer this warning method better than VBC because I get fewer warnings (7 warnings instead of 10), and I get the 3% remaining capacity warning which is my cue to do an auto-rotation at end the flight. (see attached picture).

[ZeXx86]

Hello,

thank you for your message.

Battery order in the list will be possible in the following Wave update.
If there is some benefit regarding alarm configured to exact mAh instead of % please let me know. We could add this as well if there is a good/useful reason.

[curmudgeon]

Battery order will visually simply organizing batteries. I am very much looking forward to this update. I hope the update will allow for organization of alarms as well.

As far as setting battery alarms capacity to either a "percent" of capacity or to absolute mah numbers, you may as well leave it as is just using "percentages".
Announcing remaining battery capacity as "percent" remaining has worked well for VBar Control radios over the past 9 years. Unlike the VBar Control radio which announces battery capacity remaining only at fixed non-adjustable 10% intervals, the WAVE radio elevates the customization experience by allowing the pilot to personalize the announcements to desired percentages. In my case, I am using a 90%, 75%, 50%, 25%, 10%, 3%, and 0% capacity remaining. This cuts down announcements from 10 down to only 7. The 3% capacity remaining announcement is particularly useful to me, as it is my prompt to get ready for an autorotation.

Thank you for listening to your customers.