Complicated is bad.
As much as I love my tech and gadgets, I do appreciate the most elegant approach possible.
My latest techno-foolishness was with regards to my Thunder-Power 610 battery charger for my flying wing. It’s a wonder of micro-processing power and intelligence… with regards to it’s designed job. It charges and balances my Lipo batteries without burning down the house (heck they don’t even get warm!) every time, and I really do appreciate that.
It also allows you to do things like a 50% charge, which is best for storing the rather expensive batteries when you’re not going to use them for a while. Which I did. All was well.
But due to a misreading of the manual, I thought I had gone back to 100% charging later, when I started flying this spring. And I was thinking, gee, I thought these batteries lasted longer last fall, wonder if that was just because they were new…
So last night I was planning on again doing a 50% charge, since things are sorta busy I didn’t know when I’d fly again… and discovered that’s what it was already set to. Doh. Mystery solved, and I feel better about my $125 batteries.
So now I’m going to try them out again at 100%, after getting some work done, just to sanity check that they really are the incredibly kick-ass batteries I remember from 6 months ago. I suspect I’ll have the same experience I did before, which is my neck getting tired before the batteries do, even at high throttle.
All that to say, dang guys, really, spend another $5 on good UI for your products…
