Battery Guardian: LiPo Internal Resistance Meter and Cell Checker

Battery Guardian: LiPo Internal Resistance Meter and Cell Checker

$139.99
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Battery Guardian: LiPo Internal Resistance Meter and Cell Checker

Battery Guardian: LiPo Internal Resistance Meter and Cell Checker

$139.99

Hand-assembled in Georgia

Assembled and verified by hand, one board at a time.

Veteran owned

Proudly veteran-owned and hand-assembled in America.

60-day guarantee

60-day money-back guarantee. If it is not right for you, send it back.

The Flight Line Guarantee Fly it first. Sixty days, no questions. Return it within 60 days for a full refund. Products must be in original condition and packaging. Return shipping is the customer’s responsibility unless the item is defective or incorrect. Refund policy

Ships within 48 hours, Monday through Saturday. Flat $10 shipping in the US. Shipping policy

60-day money-back guarantee. If it is not right for you, send it back.

Flat $10 shipping anywhere in the US. No surprises at checkout.

Find the failing cell before it finds you.

Battery Guardian measures internal resistance on every cell in your pack through the balance lead, without probing cells one at a time, and keeps the history so you can watch a pack age instead of guessing.

What it fits

2S, 3S and 4S packs. LiPo, LiPo HV, LiFe and Li-Ion.

Balance lead plus XT60. There is a dedicated socket for each cell count, so a plug cannot be seated one position off.

5S and larger are not supported on this board.

Two connections, one button, and every cell reported separately about seven seconds later.

What the numbers mean

Battery Guardian grades each cell against bands that scale with your pack's chemistry and capacity, because a 5000 mAh pack and a 1300 mAh pack are not expected to read the same.

LiFe packs need a C rating before they can be graded, because LiFe construction classes differ enough that one set of bands does not fit them all. The app will ask you for it.

Li-Ion packs are measured but not graded. You get the numbers for every cell and the history, but no verdict, because we do not yet have band data we would stand behind for Li-Ion. We would rather withhold a verdict than invent one.

Where the bands come from. They are drawn from RC practitioner consensus across multiple independent sources, not from a single blog post and not from a laboratory study. They are a guide for deciding when to retire a pack. They are not a clearance to fly, and this board will never show you one.

The app

Android companion app, free, no account, no cloud, no subscription.

It is not on the Play Store yet, so you install it yourself. The download is at the bottom of this section.

What it does. Every test is stored against a specific physical pack, using the pre-printed tags in the box. Readings are never pruned, expired or thinned out, and there is no limit on how many tests a pack can carry. It charts your readings over time and exports the lot to CSV.

It refuses to mislead you. If we change how the board measures, the app will not plot a trend across that change, and it tells you in plain words why a reading was left out. Old readings stay listed, never hidden, and never silently mixed with new ones taken a different way.

What it does not do. It does not predict when a pack will fail, estimate remaining life, or fit a curve to your data. It plots your readings and joins them. You make the call.

It cannot phone home. The app ships with no internet permission at all. Not disabled, not opt-out: the permission is stripped from the build, so the app is incapable of making a network request. You can verify that yourself. Get the app

Download the Android app (APK)

When prompted, allow your browser to install apps, then open the downloaded file. This is normal for apps outside the Play Store.

Or open on your phone: dl.flyingtigerrc.com/battery-guardian.apk

Build and calibration

Assembled and verified by hand, one board at a time.

Every production batch is calibrated against a reference meter using a documented procedure with a fixed pass gate. Each individual board is then verified against its batch before it ships. A board that disagrees with its batch is investigated, not quietly adjusted to match.

Works without your phone

The board is the instrument. The app is the logbook.

Battery Guardian has a 2.42 inch display and a single button. Plug in a pack and it shows live pack voltage and every cell. Hold the button and it runs a full test and shows you the result, right there, with no phone involved.

What the board cannot do is remember. It holds your most recent test and a power cycle wipes it, and it has no idea which pack is which, aside from cell count and chemistry selected at boot. That is what the app and the tags are for.

Safety and handling

Unplug your pack when you are done. Battery Guardian is powered by the pack under test through the XT60. There is no power switch. Plugging the main lead in turns it on and unplugging the main lead is the only way to turn it off.

Pulling the balance lead does not turn it off. No power reaches the board through the balance connector. A board left with the balance lead out and the main lead still in keeps running and keeps draining your pack.

A pack left connected overnight will be over-discharged, and on a 4S that means scrap. The board's own cutoff sits far below the point where a LiPo is damaged; it protects the board, not your battery.

Seat the balance plug fully, in the socket that matches your cell count.

Do not run tests back to back. Give the board a minute between tests. The load resistor gets genuinely hot during a test and there is no temperature sensor and no enforced cooldown, so pacing it is on you. It can handle a few tests back-to-back, this warning is just for your safety. We have had no issues with back-to-back testing on our bench.

Shipping Info

Orders ship within 48 hours, Monday through Saturday. Shipping is flat-rate of $10 for orders made in the US.

Return & Refund Policy

60-day money-back guarantee. If it is not right for you, send it back within 60 days of delivery, no questions asked. Email sales@flyingtigerrc.com and we will sort it out.

Battery Guardian screen showing per cell internal resistance of 9.1, 9.0, 5.7 and 11.7 milliohms with an average of 8

A pack average tells you nothing

This is a 4S pack. Its average internal resistance is 8 milliohms, which is healthy. Cell 3 reads 5.7. Cell 4 reads 11.7, more than double cell 3. A meter that gives you one number for the pack would have told you this battery was fine.

“I have 4s batteries that that are close on 3 cells (like around 8 or 9) and one cell is 14. Is that bad?”

A pilot asking the right question, on a forum, with no way to answer it.

What Battery Guardian is not

We would rather you know this before you buy than after.

It is not a four-wire lab measurement. Cell voltages come through your pack's own balance connector, which has its own contact resistance. A dedicated milliohm meter with Kelvin connections to each cell terminal is the more accurate instrument, and if absolute accuracy is what you need, that is what you should buy.

It measures at one load current, not across a range. The test draws roughly 870 mA. Internal resistance is not a single fixed property; it depends on the current you measure it at. This reading describes your pack at roughly 870 mA. It tracks your pack's condition over its life. It does not predict how the pack will behave at a flight current of tens of amps.

It is a bench and pre-flight tester, not a monitor. It does not watch your pack while it charges, it does not live in your plane, and it has no temperature sensor. You bring a pack to it and it runs a test on demand.

It cannot measure 5S or larger. That is a hardware limit, not a setting. The board has four measurement channels, and the largest balance socket takes a 4S plug.

It does not compute a true state of charge. The percentage is a straight line drawn between two voltage points, not a real discharge curve. It runs optimistic on every chemistry, and the gap is widest through the middle of the range, so do not use it to decide whether a pack has enough left in it. It is least meaningful on LiFe, whose voltage barely moves across most of its charge. The cell voltages themselves are measured; the percentage is an estimate drawn from them.

It has no reverse polarity protection, no fuse and no input clamp. Connect the main lead backwards and you will damage the board. Check your polarity.

Readings compare to each other, not to somebody else's meter. Test the pack when it is new, test it again every few months, and watch the change. That is the measurement that matters. A single number in isolation says less than you would like it to.

What do you want to know about your packs?

Which cell is dragging the pack down?

Two connections, one button, and every cell is reported separately about seven seconds later. A pack average hides an outlier. A per-cell reading does not.

Is this pack getting worse?

Every test is stored against a specific physical pack, using the pre-printed tags in the box. Readings are never pruned, expired or thinned out, and the app charts them over time and exports the lot to CSV.

When should I retire a pack?

Each cell is graded against bands that scale with your pack's chemistry and capacity, drawn from RC practitioner consensus. They are a guide for deciding when to retire a pack. They are not a clearance to fly, and this board will never show you one.

Are these packs matched?

The board reads at the same point in the same pulse, every time, on every cell, so two packs tested the same way can be compared to each other. Readings compare to each other, not to somebody else's meter.

Can I check LiFe or Li-Ion?

LiFe packs need a C rating before they can be graded, because LiFe construction classes differ enough that one set of bands does not fit them all. Li-Ion packs are measured but not graded: you get the numbers for every cell and the history, but no verdict, because we do not yet have band data we would stand behind.

Do I need my phone?

No. The board is the instrument and the app is the logbook. Plug in a pack and the 2.42 inch display shows live pack voltage and every cell. Hold the button and it runs a full test, right there, with no phone involved.

How it measures

Battery Guardian applies a real load and measures what your pack does under it.

When you start a test, the board switches a 20 ohm resistor across the pack, drawing roughly 870 mA on a fully charged 4S. It measures each cell's voltage at rest, then again under that load, and divides the sag by the current. That is internal resistance, measured rather than inferred.

The load stays on for about three and a half seconds, and the reading is taken at a fixed instant inside that window. That fixed instant is the part that matters, and it is why a reading from this board means something a single number from a bench meter does not.

A cell's apparent internal resistance climbs the longer current has been flowing. So a meter that samples whenever it happens to settle gives you a number that depends on when it looked. Battery Guardian looks at the same point in the same pulse, every time, on every cell. Two readings taken six months apart are answering the same question.

Specifications

Supported chemistriesLiPo, LiPo HV, LiFe and Li-Ion
Cell counts2S, 3S and 4S. 5S and larger are not supported on this board
ConnectorsBalance lead plus XT60, with a dedicated socket for each cell count
Load20 ohm resistor across the pack, roughly 870 mA on a fully charged 4S
Test durationAbout seven seconds, every cell reported separately
Display2.42 inch display with a single button
Power sourcePowered by the pack under test through the XT60. No power switch
App platformAndroid companion app, free, no account and no subscription

Against what you already have

Your charger's IR readout

A meter that samples whenever it happens to settle gives you a number that depends on when it looked. Battery Guardian reads at the same instant in the same pulse every time, so two readings taken six months apart are answering the same question.

A multimeter on the balance leads

A multimeter reads voltage, not resistance under load. It will catch a cell that has already drifted far out of line. It will not show you the cell that is starting to.

A dedicated milliohm meter

A four-wire lab measurement with Kelvin connections to each cell terminal is the more accurate instrument. If absolute accuracy is what you need, that is what you should buy. This is a bench and pre-flight tester built to track one pack over its life.

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