SkyRC BD250 250W 35A LiPo/LiHV/NiMH Battery Discharger & Analyzer

If you have lipos you need this dedicated discharger. It’s a beast and saves your batteries. Comes in handy when batteries are charged up, and you don’t get to use em. Item works as advertised, and easy to use. Discharges lipos fast.

This is a great product! Huge time saver! Most chargers have a discharge setting, but only do so at low amps, taking a long time. This discharger does the job quickly, easily, and safely! Highly recommend!

I've owned the BD250 for over 4 years now. Never had an issue with it. I use it to discharge my LiPo batteries at 10A to 3.7V per cell, then let the battery settle and cool down (usually about 1 hour). Then I do a storage charge to 3.8V per cell. I love the PC app to keep track of my batteries health. A fast way to discharge or just cycle your batteries. Some of my batteries are 4+ years old and still have almost the same performance as when they were new. This is a serious discharger and works better than any others that I've owned. Great way of keeping track of the health of your batteries. I don't know how I went decades without owning one (probably because the BD250 wasn't around when I got into the RC Hobby lol). I highly recommend the BD250 to anyone that wants to maintain the health of your batteries and great for discharging batteries that you may have charged and were unable to use. Since it only discharges to your specified overall voltage that you set, it doesn't know the individual cell voltage and this is why I discharge slightly below the storage charge voltage, then do a storage charge with my charger. The PC app is very easy to use and tells you time in hours, minutes, seconds Current ( Amps), Voltage, Capacity (mAh) and power rating in total watts all in a simple graph that can be saved as a file, image, and exported to Excell. You control everything from the app if that's what you want to use, or you can use the BD250 as a stand alone discharger without a PC. A must have for keeping you batteries in top shape and recording and comparing batteries to see which pack is the best performer or track the health of your batteries health.

It solved my lithium battery storage needs

I love this battery capacity tester! Many great features: 250 W max draw lets you test even big batteries quickly. It looks cool while running (blue LEDs on the fans). It only launches its fan if it gets too hot. When running it quickly alternates between AH and battery volts and amps. It lets you customize the low voltage cutoff, and the max amps to draw. The knob turning is "smart", intuitively detecting when you want to make big or small changes to the value. The interface is simple, therefore easy to remember over time (for those of us sometimes experiencing senior moments!). You can provide external power through micro-USB so its own power draw does not pollute the results, and so that it remains "on" even if the BMS in the battery you are testing cuts off. But beware: it will silently rollover back to 0 AH when it crosses ~65 AH, which makes testing batteries larger than 65 AH confusing until you realize this. If you test a battery overnight, wake up, and see 20 AH, you cannot know if it was really 20 AH or maybe 85 AH. The previous model (SKYRC BD200) had the same silent ~65 AH limit, so I purchased this one hoping that was fixed, but alas, no.

Husband is really happy with this so far, discharge your batteries on the table in minutes before you even pack up to go home and don't have to mess with it later

Uses a EC3 or ic3 adapter for all your batteries. I discharge 3s 4s and 6s batteries. Your input values will vary but here are mine: 3S 11.1, 6A, 4S 14.5 12A, 6S 22 15A When they indicator light says done let the fan continue cooling and the light stay on until these go off to properly cool the unit. Adjust your discharge values to your own personal use this is a very user friendly discharge device that works extremely well. Highly recommend ‼️ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The device doesn't instantiate under Win10 or Win11 - most likely due to the fact that the USB VID is 0x0000 and the USB PID is 0x0001. Ubuntu 22 will report this problem as well but seems to continue to try and talk to the device eventually instantiating it as a USB HID device. Unfortunately, the software only runs on Windows. Customer service is non-existent - SkyRC has a chat feature with the boast "We respond immediately" - I waited about 6 hours with no response at all. The device can have it's firmware updated, but only if you can get connected to it in the first place. Too bad - seems like an interesting device but the real value comes from the software as the interface on the device itself is very painful to use. Like lots of things now; the hardware seems OK but the software is awful. Tried 2 devices so it wasn't a defective device - these just won't instantiate and connect on Windows. I suspect the firmware was changed at some point because I know people that have been able to use them on Win10 and Win11 but clearly not anymore.

Works well as a discharger, but be aware that if this product is being used connected to a pc (using the dedicated app), it can destroy the pc and the charger if the wrong combination of keys is pressed. This sounds ridiculous, but I was using this discharger connected to a laptop via a usb port (because the app provides more options than using it stand-alone). My cat jumped onto the table and walked straight onto the keyboard before I could stop him. I have no idea what keys he was standing on, but the discharger immediately began fizzing and smoking and the laptop shutdown and won't boot. I suspect the battery I was discharging (5S LIPO) was connected directly to the usb port. So, the discharger is a write-off and, probably, so is the laptop. My error for not keeping the cat away from what I was doing, but I wouldn't have expected any combination of keys to have the effect it had (maybe abort the discharge, or lock up the laptop, but not complete thermal destruction). So......... if you have this discharger and you use it connected to a pc, be careful.