User's Guide

Development Kit User Guide – Rev11.0
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are met. This protects the battery cells, avoiding potentially dangerous failures and
extending overall battery life.
In these cases, since permanent damage to the cells has been prevented, it is
acceptable to “wake up” the battery so charging can resume. This mode of operation
can is allowed by activating the Enable Recovery Charge (ERC) toggle switch on the
Battery Settings page.
By enabling this feature, you are signaling to the WiBotic charger that it is acceptable to
send a low-level current to the battery even when it senses no (or very low) voltage from
the battery. This effectively resets the BMS circuitry and allows the battery voltage to
slowly and safely climb to the minimum threshold, at which point full-current charging
can resume.
If you choose to enable the ERC switch, however, two important concepts must be
understood:
1) You must only enable this feature if you are sure that your battery can support a
low level charge when in protected mode. This feature is NOT designed for
recovering unprotected batteries. If an unprotected battery is over-discharged,
attempting to recover it in this way may lead to permanent battery failure or even
battery fire.
2) When the WiBotic OC is powered only by the battery itself, which is the most
common case, then it will likely lose power completely when the protection
circuitry engages. This means charging will not be possible even if the
robot/drone is manually brought within range of an active transmitter. To enable
charging through the WiBotic OC, a secondary source of power for the OC is
required. This can be supplied by a DC power supply connected via the six-pin
Auxiliary Power input on most OCs (see Hardware Setup Section). Or, in certain
robots and drones, a 5V USB connection may also be used.
Due to the somewhat complex nature of protected vs. unprotected batteries and
connecting alternate power sources for the OC, we recommend contacting WiBotic
for guidance before the ERC function is used.