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=== Battery maintenance ===

The battery is nominal 11.1V (3 LiPo cells) and the robot shuts down if below 10V.

'''NB!''' the charger cable to the battery (4-wire balance plug) is disconnected on some robots.
See [[Regbot maintenance]] for more details.

'''NB2!''' Connecting the charger, or connecting USB cable while charging, sometimes disturb the processor on REGBOT. Especially if the PC is also connected to 230V.

==Battery charge==

The battery is a 3-cell Lithium polymer type with a capacity of 0.5 to 1Ah and a nominal voltage of 11.1 V.

Lithium batteries have a longer life when stored at the nominal voltage (50% charged), so we try to keep this when robots are not used.

Lithium batteries will be destroyed or damaged if discharged below 3.2V per cell (9.6V if all cells are equal - and they are typically not).

The built-in charger is of different types (internal), and some of them discharge the battery when not charging. They discharge with between 0.5 to 5 mA. i.e. a fully charged battery is drained after between 200 and 2000 hours. Typically, one cell will be dead after 1-2 months of no use if the charger is connected.

After charging a battery with a leaky charger, '''remove the charging cable''' as shown in the figure below.

[[File:charger-plugged-and-unplugged.png | 800px]]

Figure 1. Some of the chargers destroy the battery when unused for a period of time, so on most robots, the charging cable is disconnected. Reconnect to the charger when needed.

==Battery on-time==

The robot typically uses 100mA - when not moving - and thus 5-10 hours use on a fully charged battery.