HGLRC Thor Parallel Charge board & Standalone discharge module. Supplied by HGLRC

On test today are HGLRC's new Thor range of charging/discharging gear. A 4 port parallel charge board with an in-built discharge module, and the standalone version of the discharge module. As it's raining outside and I can't fly, I'll charge and discharge some lipos!
These products were kindly supplied by HGLRC for review, so please check out the (affiliate) links for more details.
Thor Parallel Charge board www.hglrc.com/products/hglrc-...
Thos standalone discharge module www.hglrc.com/products/hglrc-...
Racewhoop 30 (coming soon) www.hglrc.com/collections/new...
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[@Aether-Entropy]

Thank you for this video. I thought I was going crazy with how long it was taking my lipo to discharge.

[@CurryKitten]

Forever! The dischargers aren't really worth the effort

[@OleksiiLoveFPV]

for showing what will happen if the balancer is connected incorrectly, definitely like

[@ShinyVideoStuff]

Neat. Using the Blacklight B6 Pro myself - similar product and those balance fuses have saved my butt a few times already with clumsy plugging in!

[@CurryKitten]

Yep - I've got one of those myself as well - nice boards too.

[@treesifpv3848]

Plugging in the XT60 first helps if there's a voltage mismatch, then the surge of current doesn't go through the balance cable. If I try to land at the same voltage, then all lipos are close enough to plug in together (but still check each lipo first in case of a bad cell). For discharge I use some 12V halogen bulbs in parallel, and connect a battery alarm to the balance lead. This will bring a full 4S or 6S battery to storage in under 10 mins. It does get very hot, so I glued it with silicone to a ceramic tile as a heat shield. I use it quite often when the weather turns bad or it gets dark, and I'm left with full lipos.

[@CurryKitten]

I used to use halogen bulbs, but I'm in my office a few hours every night, so it was less hassle just to let the storage charge do it's thing, and go and swap a lipo everytime things beeped

[@WildpixFPV]

Thanks for the video! Hope your knees recovering well? Ye, I always wondered why discharge over those small things.. Once it's done I'd be charging directly up again for the next flight! For discharge to storage I have 3 ISDT BG-8S smart lipo checkers. They can quickcharge the phone, or anything over USB. Rest of leftover power goes in over-discharged lipos from hard rippings.. :) Happy flying!

[@CurryKitten]

It's getting there - thanks. Ready to start flying again, but the weather disagrees :D Usually after flying my lipos are sitting very close to 3.8v per cell, so I've usually got all my lipos back to storage charge pretty quickly. Those little ISDT things you mentioned look pretty cool though

[@WildpixFPV]

@@CurryKitten Using them every day, great to see all cells at once but still as easy as with the old checkers.. It balances 6S quite nicely but takes a long time to balance 4S. Yep, fall is on it's way in Germany, too. Heat bag is back alive. ;-)

[@wingsounds13]

Nice to see you, you have been kind of quiet for a while now. This does look like a very nice parallel charge board, but I agree with you that the dischargers seem to have a very limited value. J.P.

[@CurryKitten]

Yes - between recovering from knee surgery and the weather turning bad - I've not been very active. I've got a whole bunch of things ready to fly though for when the weather picks up !

[@EnglishTurbines]

I was waiting for you to show us the cell status after that mass charge up..These things make me very nervous TBH...😳😳😳😳😮😮

[@CurryKitten]

Sorry - I did double check them - all was nicely equal at 4.2v I'm always nervous when charging, my last charger blew all by itself!

[@EnglishTurbines]

@@CurryKitten Good of you to reveal that blown charger...Some wouldn't..🤔🤔😳🇬🇧

[@MCsCreations]

Awesome review, Wayne! 😃 I won that board from Gal Kramer in a giveaway... It's a pretty useful board indeed! 😃 Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊

[@CurryKitten]

Awesome MC - congrats on the win!

[@MCsCreations]

@@CurryKitten Oh, it's been a while already. 😊

[@TAGE_FPV]

There's definitely no conflicting information about order of operations for parallel chargers. You never want to plug in the balance ports first because if you make a mistake with one battery being charged more than another, you risk sending a few hundred watts of power over teensy gauge wire on the balance leads. This = shorted balance wires as they heat up which could mean a fire. XT60s go in first, let them rest for about 2-3 minutes or so to level out, then you add balance leads 1 by one.

[@CurryKitten]

I'm hoping that's what I said, because it become obvious once you understand about the way current floods between the lipos is the voltages are different, and those little balance leads can't take it. There was certainly lots of info out there previously where blog posts were saying "balance leads first". Certainly enough to confuse a noob. Hopefully this isn't still the case

[@GeorgeCooper_LoneWolf]

Nice looking board, I know what you mean in the instructions on one of my balance boards it says to plug the XT60/30 in first but on other board, the instructions says to plug the balance lead in first witch I always do, toss of the coin if you ask me. I would however recoman you only plug one battery in at a time - both leads then move onto the next. Good post matey

[@CurryKitten]

So that's adding a 3rd recommendation to the list :D I think the idea of getting all the main battery outputs is to stabilize the voltage before the balance leads, but who knows. Hopefully nothing will explode

[@olafschermann1592]

I think the idea of these small dischargers is to buy 10 of them and throw one of them on each battery you didn‘t use when you come home and dont‘t care until you fly again.

[@MayankJoneja]

@Currykitten cool review, thanks! Btw isn't the discharge module more of a way to (very) slowly and safely discharge bad packs with unbalanced cells that you want to safely dispose? Of course discharging healthy packs to storage voltage would be faster via the charger itself.

[@CurryKitten]

It'll only discharge cells down to storage (3.8v per cell) so no good if you want to dispose of the lipo. I've had one charger (an IDST one I think) that had an option to take a lipo down to a disposable state, else you can always use an LED bulb to take the cells down as much as possible. It's surprising just how much even a fully discharged battery can recover though.

[@licensetodrive9930]

You should be able to hack the discharge module to work faster, by replacing its discharge resistor with a lower ohm one, but not too low because it may not be using a mosfet to short the battery across the resistor, just the control chip's own internal switching which won't be able to handle much current. Increased heat will be a side effect, maybe add a small heatsink.

[@sawyannaing7040]

Thanks for sharing. I want to know one thing. How should I charge if I want to make parallel charge with 100% used 3batteries and only 60% used 1battery during flight time?

[@CurryKitten]

The answer might be - you don't. Each cell needs to be within around 0.1v of each other to be safe. You might want to bring them up to a common level (if your charger has that option) an then parallel charge from there.

[@licensetodrive9930]

If you've a 3D printer or know someone with one, this little print could help you avoid 'bad things happening' with parallel charge boards, bungs that sit over the pins of the balance sockets you don't want to use, Thingiverse 3731075 So on that Thor board if you only intend on charging 4S you install bungs that sit over the last 2 pins.

[@martr]

Thor, God of Funder :-)

[@typxxilps]

Those dischargers make only sense if they are cheap as hell like 2 € or so . Then it might be nice to have 5 or so of them to put on each battery a discharger that is very slowly discharging to the storage level. It all depends on the price - then the amount of hours do not bother me if they also shut off fully at cut off voltage. Regarding parallel charging: it is dead for me if all batteries have to be in a level of 0.1 or whatever voltage to each other. I do not want to charge each of these to a certain level to start my parallel charging event. I would be happy to have a sequential charging board where I can connect 5 batteries and one after the other will be charged fully. Nothing else I need cause the parallel charging does not fit if the 0.1 volt is mandatory. Far too much effort to get my batteries to the same level after a sunday of flying cause they will spread all over or before the flying day they will have lost volts differently depending on size, days since last charge and so on. But that depends on what you are doing and fyling. I usually fly planes, each has its own 1 or 2 batteries so a lot to charge, but not 6 batteries of same type and size. I learned to like or love the dji chargers at least for charging at home where I simply hook those batteries up or put them in the MINI 2 storage box and let them charge over night. Next day they are best to use, 4 days later they are in storage mode.

[@stevefox3763]

you wouldn't feel safer with my parallel board, its got fuses but they are stupid high 40A and soldered into the board! I had a 2s pack plugged in and without thinking i plugged in a 4s and the 2s packs wires caught fire because it was a cheap 18650 pack with pvc insulation and no parallel board fuses blew :/ Ive been meaning to remove the fuses and solder in sockets but i have been meaning to do that for two years now lol.

[@CurryKitten]

Those 40A fuses sound similar to my early fires with no fuses! Time to get a new one, or fix that one

[@stevefox3763]

@@CurryKitten fix it is a better option for me, I have two of them on two chargers and don't fancy buying new ones, I might actually order some fuse holders on aliexpress tonight, I have micro blade fuses coming out my ears so those won't cost anything and will put 5A or 7.5A in for fast blow as I never charge over 5A as that's the Max my chargers do and always bring packs to the save voltage before hooking them together. They are gonna get loaded up regularly again soon, my giant scale truck which I've just converted to electric is using 6x 3s packs connected up to make 6s 3p and looks sketchy as hell lol

[@antigravity8247]

Why they don't put in a switch to connect the discharge module to the parallel side? You have to plug in a loop cable to discharge all at once. Again not thought through to the end.

[@wingsounds13]

Why?? because it would take DAYS to discharge 4 1100-1300mAh packs. This discharger barely has any value bringing a mostly discharged pack down to 3.8v/cell to match packs for parallel charging. Personally, I think that this parallel board would be much more valuable if it were to have five ports for charging packs and no discharger.

[@WildpixFPV]

@@wingsounds13 YEARS xD

[@antigravity8247]

@@wingsounds13 Ok, unloading each pack individually is therefore much faster xD

[@CurryKitten]

Well, I think ditching the discharge module and having an extra socket for parallel charging would have been more useful. You can parallel discharge, but if you have been out flying then your lipos are much less likely to all be within the cell voltage range for parallel charging, and unless you have a really cool charger with a very high discharge rate you'll often find it's no faster than doing them individually.

[@JEMTAC]

well it's 1 AM lol

[@CurryKitten]

It really was - but I wasn't just sitting there waiting for lipos to discharge :D