LiGlow V2 (Alarm & Strobe & Landing light) Kit
Thank you for your interests and purchasing of the
LipoAlarmStrobe kit. We hope you find it fun & easy to use.
v Instruction – wiring hook up:
o Connect all 5 green/blue pairs of wires to 5 LEDs. The green
wire will be connected to the positive (+) leg of the LED (the longer leg). The
blue wire goes to the negative (-) leg of the LED of course. The green/white pair of wires is going to
the 10mm “landing light” led. Please
twist each pair of wires to prevent radio glitch to enter to your radio
system. You should twist about 5 twists
per inch of wire. The more twists the better. Please finish all 6 LEDs before
connecting the power. Be sure to use the
supplied heat shrink tubes to cover the legs of the leds.
o Connect the
RED & BLUE pair of wires to your battery pack (parallel with your ESC – you
could use a small connector or just solder it directly to the battery plug).
The RED wire will be connected to positive (+)
end of battery. The BLUE wire will be negative
(-). Please twist the red & blue wires together to eliminate the risk of
radio glitch. Please do NOT connect power to the kit in REVERSE especially
after connecting with RX. Doing so could damage the light kit or your ESC
permanently. Please double check
your wiring work before powering up.
o Servo wire
is connected to any free channel on your RX if you have one. If you don’t have
any free channel, it’s okay, you will not have landing light option but you
still have lipo alarm & strobes. More on that later.
v Functionality:
The V2 kit has the following functionalities:
§ Landing light: remote control a
light on your heli/plane from your TX. Could be used as a remote switch with
some small modification.
§ Landing light has 3 modes: ON / OFF & Fast blinking
§ LiPo alarm: lights up all 4 leds (including the big landing
light) when your lipo pack voltage is low. This is to tell you when the battery
voltage is low so that you can stop using it to avoid over discharging a lipo
battery pack. You will not miss the lipo alarm signal even in daylight.
§ Running Strobes & navigation lights for decoration,
orientation and night flying.
There are kits for 3-cell Lipo pack, 2-cell Lipo pack
and 4-cell pack. Other numbers of cells configuration will be also available
upon request.
v Operation:
The LipoAlarmStrobe kit continuously checks the
output voltage of a battery pack to see if it drops below a certain threshold.
Normally, when the voltage of the battery pack is still high, the strobes will
… well, strobe; the landing light will be working independently from strobes
and be controlled by you from your TX.
When the kit detects battery low condition it lights up all strobes
including the landing light and all these lights are not flashing. If there is
any reason that the battery voltage is recover, the leds will come back their
original functionality again (this is helpful when you know your battery is
being abused – i.e it cannot provide the current your model asks for. The
voltage will be dropped and the light alarm will go off but go back to normal
after abuse is stopped.)
When battery is getting low, the voltage may jump up
and down above the alarm threshold, causing all lights go steady and back to
strobe. This is normal. You can decide to land now or you can wait till all
lights are steady lit and not strobe any more.
Please stop flying as soon as possible after you see
the alarm goes off. It will prolong the life of your battery. The threshold is
set above the battery 3-volt-per-cell limit so you can land your model safely
without rushing it down.
Landing light operation: If there is a free RX
channel to connect to the kit and if the TX is already on, the big white led
(the one connecting to the green/white wire pair) will be controlled by the
radio from the ground. If there is any
reason that the radio signal is lost and the kit does not see a servo signal
fed to it for more than 4 seconds, it will disable the landing light. The
landing light will then become a normal strobe! So, if you don’t have a free channel, don’t worry. You will have
another big strobe, which will be also a lipo alarm light. To restore the landing light function, you
need to disconnect the power to the kit and reconnect it back again. Remember
TX has to be on first.
Each strobe has a resistor to reduce the current
supplied to the led. The landing light
due to its high current will have a hot resistor. This is normal.
v Adjust the landing light mode:
Landing light (the 10mm led in the kit) has 3 modes
of operation: OFF/ON/FAST BLINK. The
mode of the landing light depends on the input servo signal. The servo signal of the landing light could
be assigned to a stick or a switch on your TX.
You can adjust the ATV (Futaba term) or EPA (Hitec term) to achieve
different mode of the landing light.
The landing light will be OFF if the servo pulse is about 0-40%. It will
be steady ON if the servo pulse is above 70%. Anything in between 40 – 70%
results in a fast flashing landing light.
For example, if you connect the servo of the landing
light kit to channel 7 on your RX. On your TX, the control of this channel is
usually a switch. You could adjust the
ATV / EPA of this channel so that with lower end of the switch you have is 0%,
and the upper switch is 50%. With this
set up, when you flip the switch, you will have the landing light either OFF or
FLASHING. You could also adjust the
ATV / EPA so that the lower end of the switch is 50%, the upper end is 100%,
you will have the switch to control between FAST FLASHING and steady ON. Or you can adjust the two ends of the switch
to have 0 and 100 to have OFF/ON. You get the idea.
* Note: The landing light, if it’s not already steady
on, will become steady on when the lipo alarm is triggered.
v Custom modification:
o Any LED can be removed without affecting the kit’s
operation. Just simply cut the wire while power is off. Please seal the cut to
prevent short circuit which could damage the kit or your model.
o Cell count
can be changed by replacing a small resistor. Please contact for more
information.
o The led on
the strobes can be changed/customized freely. You will need to calculate the
resistor supplied the led. There could be many combination of leds connected to
each strobe output or to the landing light. Just be sure not to use more LEDS
than what the circuit can supply (please see specs bellow)
v Technical Specification
o 4-cell version: alarm will go off at around 12.9 volts and
below.
o 3-cell
version: alarm will go off at around 9.88 volts and below.
o 2-cell
version: It changes to steady lit at 6.3 volts and below
o Number of
strobes: 4
o Maximum
input voltage: 20 volts.
o Weight:
without wires & LED: 1.3 grams. Weight with wires & LEDS varies
depending on the length of the wires. It’s about 5.5 grams to – 7 grams.
o Maximum
current output of each strobe: 300mA.
o Strobe’s
output voltage: a little bellow the input voltage.
o Maximum
current consumption with standard configuration (10mm landing light, 3 5mm
strobes 2 5mm nav lights) when all leds lit: 230 - 260 mA depending on LED used
& the input voltage.
v Caution:
o Please do not connect the kit to battery in reverse
o Please do
not short the strobes output or letting it short with any other wires. They carry
hot battery voltage. It could destroy your kit if the two wires of the strobe get shorted
o Please do
not connect an LED directly to the strobe output without a current limitting resistor.
o Be careful
not to pull the wires out of the kit.
o Give the
wires a little slack when installing it in your model.
o Inspect the
wire after a crash (if your model suffers one) to make sure no short or no wire
opening that could touch other metal parts or wires.
o As always,
do a radio range check when changing any electronics stuff.
v Support & contact: Please email us at ttran(at)hnbui(dot)com if you have any
question or problem. If you prefer live support, please email us with your phone number. We will do our best to have you as a happy customer :)