BAT-SAFE is a low cost safety device developed by Tom Mast, aircraft design engineer. It's easy to use, and literally put a lid on the dangers of malfunctioning batteries. They just released a Kickstarter campaign. It has the potential to become a standard to people that use lipo batteries and want some piece of mind.
Comments
@Mike I forgot to tell you, I posted your campain on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Multicopter/comments/47jefi/batsafe_kickst... Just thought you would like to know, there might be a few questions, and a few people backed your campain.
@Charles
I appreciate that you back safety, lets hope more people see it your way!
Just backed for two boxes! Good luck with your kickstarter campaign. It is not as cool as the 1M$+ recent drone kickstarts, but it has a lot more chances of delivering, and safety is important to our hobby.
@Chris
I am totally with you. The batteries we use in our flying equipment right now were not designed to be discharged so fast. Just think how quickly they get "old", compared with cell phone or notebook batteries. I know from hardcore 3D heli pilots that they dont even live 50 flights, they get suck dry in less than 4 mins.
I have a huge respect for fire fighters, I have been saved once from huge damage (long story) by. I think that talking about a problem openly and liking and promoting a development of a product that does really address what many don't think of could happen helps this ever growing community. And yes, 2 minutes is in my opinion a lot, the smoke and heat build up so fast...
Hi @Darius,
Care to share the relevant standards? Since they are not free.
Now on to the general comments of your post, yet another product this one can save people and property and you try to take it down. Yes it would be great if all batteries were safe, fact is that they just don't make the batteries the way the standards might say, note the batteries arent labeled to those standards. So how about this, the product deals with the batteries that are 'on the market' as of now. In the future it would be nice to have 'safe' LIPO's but I doubt that will happen anytime soon - grams count in airtime.
Are you trained in fighting fires? I know I am, in fact I train others in fighting fires. You have to consider in this case the chance of increasing the possibility of starting a fire vs the fire spreading. It takes less than 2 mins for a small fire that can be put out by the resident to then be at a stage where a person cannot extinguish a fire and the house is lost. Count that less than 2 mins, so yeah I'd take a metal box with a high temperature tolerance vs your suggested plastic box that will melt in the event of ignition. You have to consider the environment that the batteries are located at, seconds count with fires. So if this increases the odds of a fire by 1% but gives me a 90% higher chance of stopping it from spreading it's a huge gain in my eyes.
@Andreas
From Kickstarter:
"The internal box is 9.5x6.5x4 inches. The external dimensions are 12x9x7 inches."
@Tony
There is a flame arrester inside the lid of the box, which is composed of stainless steel wool and glass fiber material. This cools the gasses below self-ignition point, and most lot of the polymer-soot that is evaporated condenses inside this arresting unit. The arrester will be twice as thick than on the prototype that is shown on Kickstarter.
As for the news, well, it means a lot more trouble for the people that want to take their drone on vacation, or go on a business trip by plane. Only a manufacturer of batteries can provide the necessary documentation to airship lithium batteries in cargo planes.
I just want to emphasize that the problem of fires in people's homes is real and significant. Most if not all of the people I talk to that are in the RC hobby or drone biz have experienced or know someone that has experienced a lipo house fire. I cannot believe the number of times I have been told "Oh yea, I know a guy that had a lipo fire". This is a real problem... It’s just that RC and drone types don't make a stink about it, as when dealing with highly dangerous machines, the liability is on them and they are willing to accept the risk. But this box can be a great way to stop the chance of a house fire...Something that no one wants to ever have to experience!
@ Mike B
Did you have a plastic bag of sand over the opening to suppress the fire? That does reduce the out-gassing in the videos I have observed.
On your other point, the article you linked to has the explanation why they are being banned from commercial passenger aircraft (still allowed on freight aircraft: http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/cargo/dgr/Documents/lithium-battery-gu... )
From the IATA document:
@Tony Well, the box does filter the smoke and retains most of the soot, you can see that on the video. I speak from my own experience, a battery fire that happened to me left sticky, oily soot, which you can't just paint over, on all the surfaces of the entire ground floor. Was lucky though that there was nothing near the battery that could have spread the fire.
Batteries do catch on fire, for no reason. It happened to me twice, and I was lucky. I like the idea of a device that protects me from malfunctioning equipment, of course I would prefer to be able to buy batteries that are safe to use. But there obviously aren't, they have been completely banned from commercial airliners by the ICAO http://reut.rs/1QeBTsj beginning on April 1st 2016.
They were obviously banned because they are not safe, or at least not as safe as we hope them to be.
And if my battery catches on fire, I'd rather have it happen inside a box that prevents starting a home fire. I know that my batteries do warm a bit on charging, but I am pretty sure I could wrap them in a sleeping sack and they won't catch on fire from overheating while charging.
Anyone that tells me that lipo batteries, especially the large kind that we use in drones, are safe, needs to explain why they got banned from commercial aircraft. You can't even check a spare cell phone bats anymore.
-
1
-
2
-
3
of 3 Next