SkyRC MC3000 help thread

Batteries and Chargers Chargers
77

I am sure the manufacturer has extensive support on this product.

78

I have 25 AAA Eneloops of varying age and most test under 100 milliohm, but three test above 200 using a 750mA (1C) discharge. Not a huge concern as I don’t use these in high-drain situations. Still, I’d like to play around with my MC3000’s cycling functions to see if I can improve these batteries.

Is there a recommended program for this? I don’t mind if it stresses or even risks further damage to the batteries as this is mostly to satisfy my own curiosity.

Thanks!

79

So I just bought one of these a week ago and am trying to learn to use it (I overbought for my needs and level of knowledge) Right now I’m just using it to charge Samsun R25 batteries for my vape mod but I plan to expand to using more rechargeable batteries around the house. I’m trying to create a refresh program for the samsung R25s. Can anyone tell me what the setting would be and how to figured it out so I can create my own programs without having to take up other people time every time I get a new kind of battery. Any help would be appreciated and thank you in advance.

80

You generally don’t refresh 25Rs or any other Li-Ion battery, there’s no point. Do you mean you want a charge program tailored for the 25R? If you’re thinking about NiMH (like enloop) batteries, the default “Eneloop Refresh Std AA” (or AAA) programs look fine to me. I did a little research since my last comment :slight_smile:

81

Understood on not needing to refresh. Is there any point to a tailor made recharge program then?

82

The Battle Pumpkin, if you want them to last the only care li-ion batteries need is to put away or store them not fully charged (short answer: don't go much above 3.9V). You can read about this and many other battery knowledge here: BU-808: How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries @ Battery University.

83

Sure I can recommend a custom 25R program. First, you need the tech specs for your battery. 18650batterystore.com and others often have links. Yours is here:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0481/9678/0183/files/samsung_25r_data_sheet.pdf

So I put those numbers into a program exactly as those specs recommend:
BATT TYPE: LiIon
MODE: Charge
CAPACITY: 3200mAh
C.CURRENT: 1.25A
D.CURRENT: OFF
C.RESTING: 0min
D.RESTING: OFF
CYCLE COUNT: OFF
CYCLE MODE: OFF
TARGET VOLT: 4.20V
TERMINATION: 0.10A
RESTART VOLT: OFF
D.REDUCE: OFF
CUT VOLT: OFF
CUT TEMP: 45C
CUT TIME: 240min

Note “CAPACITY” is a safety number a bit above your actual capacity, in case you were wondering. CUT TIME is also a safety maximum above how long it should actually take.

You could change these (or add a second program) for faster, still safe, within specs, and get you like 90 to 95% charge in about half the time:
C.CURRENT: 2.5A
TERMINATION: 0.25A
CUT TIME: 180min

If you have other 18650s and you’re not sure what to use, these will be slow, but safe:
CAPACITY: 4000mAh
C.CURRENT: 0.75A
TERMINATION: 0.10A
CUT TIME: 360min

84

Sorry, I didn’t actually answer your question :slight_smile:

The point of a tailor made recharge program is to get full use of your battery so it runs the longest every day and performs well over hopefully several years, while charging safely and quickly. It’s a balance between these factors. Honestly any decent charger will be fine in 99% of cases but the MC3000 allows you to tweak things.

Hope the programs are useful anyway!

85

There is no point to refresh LiIon cells. You can run C>D cycle as per manufacturer recommendations (charge current, end of charge current, discharge current, end of discharge voltage), only to measure discharged capacity. This may be useful if you want to follow the state of wear of your cells. If you have a reference on the new cell, you may want to do it once every 30-40 cycles.

86

As mentioned here, here are some links to MC3000-specific info I posted on another thread. I’m reposting here to try and make it easier to find as this seems to be the BLF’s “main thread” for the MC3000:

87

Following up on this, early this morning I managed to get ahold of a helpful representative at the SkyRC website chat, and asked about v1.17 (which came on my SkyRC MC3000, purchased late last April), the previous version v1.15, and the current one v1.18;

TL;DR: v1.17 has a bug (related to the operation of D.REDUCE setting and possibly to its “inverse similar during CV-Phase of Li-Ion battery charging”[1] which is why SkyRC does not make that version available for download, and instead recommend updating to v1.18. I asked about falling back to 1.15 in case 1.18 doesn’t work for me, but they apparently evaded that question.

[1] see the SkyRC manual p.22, under “D.REDUCE”.

And here’s the complete transcript (edited for clarity/brevity):

13 Sep, 2023

[15:08] DMenezes: I have an SkyRC MC3000 with firmware 1.17. I see there’s an update available for firmware 1.18, but I’m worried that the new firmware could not work as well and I would need to go back to the old one.

[15:09] DMenezes: I searched the SkyRC website for version 1.17 so I could go back to it if needed, but could but could not find it. I could find version 1.15, tho.

[15:11] DMenezes: My question is, is there a reason the older version (1.15) is available for download, but the newer one (1.17) isn’t?

[17:34] SkyRC: There is a bug in V1.17
[17:34] SkyRC: So we did not put it on the site
[17:35] SkyRC: The bug is about the charge or discharge reduce

[17:50] DMenezes: Ok, so I better upgrade ASAP, I guess :slight_smile:
[18:34] DMenezes: if I upgrade to 1.18 and it doesn’t work for me, should I then move to 1.15?

[18:45] SkyRC: I believe 1.18 will work for you

I hope this is helpful to other MC3000 owners.

1 Thank
88

Yes, the person did not answer the firmware rollback question… I swear I read that it was possible. Probably in that CPF thread where people were dealing with Betas.
Too bad he didn’t point you to a changelog. But at least we know why 1.17 is not available.

Thanks for posting this!

2 Thanks
89

I will try and ‘update’ (actually, fall back) to 1.15 first (and run with it minimally, in order to answer that question), and then to 1.18 (and use it extensively, to see how well that version works). Will post my results here.

Might take a while (from many hours to a couple of days) as I’m currently recovering from a data-loss event on my computer, and have to finish it before rebooting into Windows to do these upgrades.

1 Thank
90

Glad to join you all here!

I confirm that I have read the firmware rollback stuff too, but I also can’t find/remember where. I also don’t recall the level of reliability of this information: not implying it is unreliable just that I don’t recall.

Also posting here the stuff on the PHYSICAL hardware (which is NOT the same thing as the MC3000 firmware reports about “HW version” in its Setup program)

1 Thank
91

I tore down my HW >V2.2 MC3000 and was surprised to find an STM32 clone as the MCU. Mine has a Geehy APM32F103RBT6, which seems to be a clone of the STM32F103RBT6.

1 Thank
92

Thanks for sharing that. I’ve been wondering about my MC3000 MCU and was about to open it up to have a look, and you just saved me the effort.

How so, “surprised”? (not arguing, just curious.)

I wonder how easy (or hard) it would be to use JTAG or similar to dump its internal flash. Then we could try and reverse-engineer it to see whether there’s a way to implement some functionality I for one been lusting after, eg reading programmed charging parameters via Bluetooth.

93

Managed to do it all last night.

Was unable to update using the PC Monitor 1.05 software: it always complained of “can’t get firmware list from the internet”.

So I downloaded manually from the SkyRC website, first version 1.15 and then ran it: update took a couple of minutes and in the end the charger rebooted and came back up with all my settings erased. Tested it first with the app and then the PC Monitor software and both seemed to work ok, at least for charging.

As I was originally running the version 1.17 that came in my charger, that confirms to me that downgrading (ie, flashing an older firmware version) indeed works.

Then I did the same with firmware version 1.18, same erase-settings behavior, and also seems to work ok with the app and the PC Monitor software.

Then I rebooted back into Linux and confirmed that 1.18 also works with my custom mc3000ble.py firmware.

I will test 1.18 more extensively in the coming days and weeks and report here if I find anything interesting.

1 Thank
94

A few notes about that: the PC software really sucks, besides its non-working firmware upgrading feature as mentioned, it’s full of typos and lacks basic functionality; case in point, I couldn’t find a way to see the battery IR anywhere (not on the screen and not in the generated CSV file, which BTW is generated “invisibly” when one clicks on the Save button in the main screen – and I say invisibly because it only offers to save a BMP file of the screen, the CSV is saved along but you have to figure it out by checking in the same directory afterwards.

And I thought the smartphone app was bad… which it actually is, but the PC software manages to be much worse.

Well, at least I won’t be missing it as I can’t get it to run under Linux anyway (won’t work in a Windows VM due to the USB VID/PID issue I already mentioned, and also fails to work under WINE because it can’t connect to the charger).

To sum it up, this is an area where the MC3000 could really use some improvement – or SkyRC could publish the complete protocol spec so opensource developers could support it fully, instead of piecemeal due to gaps during reverse engineering.

95

The free software DataExplorer supports the MC3000.

2 Thanks
96

Thanks. I had seen references to it already, but was under the impression that it was only for data capture/visualization. Can it be used to operate the charger (load/save/start programs, change charger settings, etc)?