Team Orion Advantage LiPo-ready charger

[PeterV]

http://www.rccaraction.com/pics/advantage_carbon_lipo.jpg

All Team Orion products are designed from the ground up, by racers for racers. This philosophy allows us to come out on top against the strongest competition while at the same time providing the best equipment for every level of racer and hobbyist. From the track to the backyard, we take battery charging in any application as seriously as charging our own World Championship winning V-Max Plus RDS cells. Team Orion has spent over a year of research and development with our team of designers, engineers, and our World Championship winning drivers such as Atsushi Hara, Marc Rheinard, Surikarn, and David Spashett, to bring you the charger you now see before your eyes.

The very popular Advantage Charging system has been updated with a new, high tech carbon fiber look case with charging function specifically for LiPo (lithium polymer) battery packs.

• Charge 1 to 8 cells
• 50 to 5400 mAh NiMH and NiCd batteries at 1 to 10 Amps
• 11 to 15 volts D/C input
• Customizable Linear, Flex and Step charging
• NEW LiPo charge function
• 5 charging memories
• Battery cycling
• Discharge at 1 or 10 amps
• Input and output short circuitProtection
• Attachable battery charging tray
• Full motor run-in feature
• Powers commutator lathes
• Full manual lap counting functions and displays: time elapsed, average lap time and number of laps
• Indigo Blue backlight 2 x 16 characters display
• Customizable user name
• English, German, French and Japanese displays
• Easy to navigate, 4 push button settings
• Choice of 3 different alarm tones or silent function
• Silicone output wires
• Built in Clock
• High tech carbon fiber look case


ORI30117 Advantage Charging System w/LiPo $285.00

[schenck77]

looks pretty good, any idea of what the street price will be?

[tadium54]

i like it. the holder on the side look very nice and a good idea

[AudiTT-Quattro]

I have one of the original Advantages. It's a very good charger.

Pete, do you know if I can get my current Advantage flashed with the new LIPO firmware?

[minimole]

Looks nice, but aint 8 lipo cell capable a bit OTT? Or is that 10 Nimh cells?

Duane.

[rckid11]

Looks pretty good. Specs are alot like the ICE. I wish they could put in a higher discharge rate.

[glassdoctor]

1-8 cells nickel 1-10 amps

It doesn't say how many cells lithium. But it's probably only 2 or 3 cells lithium based on the max of 8 cells nickel.

My guess is 3s lipo

[minimole]

OK.

But if you just need a charger for lipos, and already have a nice Nimh charger, just get one of the cheap, but decent 1-3 cell lipo chargers for about $35.

Duane :D

[Mr. Schumacher]

Nice! :eek: The "carbon graphite" case make it look much better than the old one. It will be charger of the year. :)

[ducklake1]

How long does it take to charge?

[minimole]

Depends on the mah of the pack your charging, and what ampage you set the charger to.

And yes, the CF look does look very nice!

Duane :D

[Windsorguy99]

Nice! :eek: The "carbon graphite" case make it look much better than the old one. It will be charger of the year. :)

Yes, because after all....that "carbon fiber look case" is "High tech".....what's so High tech about it, you ask??? Simple, it's been specifically designed to siphon $$$$ from your wallet by making you think it's an additional feature and essentially costing the manufacturer nothing!!

Does anyone know what they mean by "Manual lap counting"? if you need to have someone manually enter your laps, it seems to be a useless feature..likewise..even if it's compatible with their IR lap counting system, you'd still need a 12V power supply for the charger trackside and a clear line of sight to your car to record times...

It'll be interesting to see street price on this unit, because as someone else already noted, the ICE seems to have similar specs, at half the price. This unit is backlit, but the ICE has more charge profiles and a much larger display...

[Rick Hohwart]

Yes, because after all....that "carbon fiber look case" is "High tech".....what's so High tech about it, you ask??? Simple, it's been specifically designed to siphon $$$$ from your wallet by making you think it's an additional feature and essentially costing the manufacturer nothing!!

Does anyone know what they mean by "Manual lap counting"? if you need to have someone manually enter your laps, it seems to be a useless feature..likewise..even if it's compatible with their IR lap counting system, you'd still need a 12V power supply for the charger trackside and a clear line of sight to your car to record times...

It'll be interesting to see street price on this unit, because as someone else already noted, the ICE seems to have similar specs, at half the price. This unit is backlit, but the ICE has more charge profiles and a much larger display...

Do you even know what you are talking about? If you know anything about racing you will know this is the same charger used by the best pro racers in the world to charge their NiMh race packs and is considered one of the best chargers on the market.

For $10.00 MSRP more you can buy this version and charge both your NiMh and LiPo. The case does cost nothing extra. it is simply a way for customers to differentiate between the TWO chargers.

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXJYN5&P=ML

Expect the street price to be a few dollars more than the original.

[rckid11]

Little defensive there, huh?

[TimisTim]

That is a very steep price for a charger if you arent VERY serious about racing. Sure it is one of the best chargers for NIMH cells, BUT lipo's arent that picky. They dont need all the flex and other forms of charging just a basic cell recognition software and cc/cv peaking ability program and thats it. I'd still have to go with the astroflight 109 over this.

[Rick Hohwart]

The charger is a NiMH charger that can also charge LiPos.

I, nor would anyone at Team Orion, suggest that if you are solely charging LiPos you should buy this charger. If you want to charge LiPos you can use Team Orion's upcoming LiPo only charger.

[Windsorguy99]

Do you even know what you are talking about? If you know anything about racing you will know this is the same charger used by the best pro racers in the world to charge their NiMh race packs and is considered one of the best chargers on the market.

For $10.00 MSRP more you can buy this version and charge both your NiMh and LiPo. The case does cost nothing extra. it is simply a way for customers to differentiate between the TWO chargers.

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXJYN5&P=ML

Expect the street price to be a few dollars more than the original.

Yes, it is considered one of the best chargers on the market....along with a multitude of others...( I still see plenty of high-level racers using CE, LRP, MMR, etc chargers...)

The overly inflated MSRP threw me off...wasn't expecting quite THAT much difference between MSRP and street price as the other chargers in this category don't seem to have quite so much of a difference...than again it's hard to tell, as anymroe when information is posted sometimes it is MSRP, sometimes street....

As far as the case is concerned, it's your PR department passing it off as a 'High tech' feature...not me....perhaps you should discuss that with them...

and before you bash me about not knowing what I'm talking about...perhaps you could try to be a little more constructive and answer some of the questions and/or concerns I raised in my original post.

[Rick Hohwart]

Yes, it is considered one of the best chargers on the market....along with a multitude of others...( I still see plenty of high-level racers using CE, LRP, MMR, etc chargers...)

The overly inflated MSRP threw me off...wasn't expecting quite THAT much difference between MSRP and street price as the other chargers in this category don't seem to have quite so much of a difference...than again it's hard to tell, as anymroe when information is posted sometimes it is MSRP, sometimes street....

As far as the case is concerned, it's your PR department passing it off as a 'High tech' feature...not me....perhaps you should discuss that with them...

and before you bash me about not knowing what I'm talking about...perhaps you could try to be a little more constructive and answer some of the questions and/or concerns I raised in my original post.

I apologize.

The case itself is not high-tech, the look is. In my opinion it is anyway. The point is that a product's appearance is important to the guy buying it. And compared to the previous version of the charger, this is a big improvment. Call the look, "high tech", "improved", "more attractive", or whatever, it is different and should be mentioned.

As for manual lap counting the description is pretty self explanatory. It is a built in stopwatch. This may not seem like a big deal but at the highest levels of racing you do not always want your competitors to know that you are tracking their laps. This is a discreet way of doing so. It is also a helpful timer that can be used to time tire sauce and tire warmer applications.

[Travis Dupree]

Sounds like a sweet piece of equipment.

Rick - I need one for my pit table...hook a brutha up...hahaha...later.

Everything is going up in price these days. Its' just a part of the economy trying to grow.

[Simen123]

It looks like a nice charger, but why only 10A discharge?

[e_lm_70]

• Full manual lap counting functions and displays: time elapsed, average lap time and number of laps


What a waste of enginer's hours to add a no sense function in a charger !!!

Who has a charger so close to the track that can see precisely the car on a track ?

Who don't have a AMB PT or other lap sistem ?

Who waste the charging time for keep track of laps ????

e_lm_70

PS: The fake carbon look, make this charge look cheap!

[Frank McKinney]

Hey e_lm_70 - welcome to about a day before your post.

[Windsorguy99]

lmao@Frank....

I was going to ask if he even knew what he was talking about ..but Rick already apologized...so I figured it would be in bad taste...

[More Juice]

the fake carbon/graphite looks nasty. You can tell its straight plastic. Might as well have kept it a single color. But from this forum, it seems like everyone likes the fake look =).

[rukiddingme]

Yeah I personnally like the black better but it seems like the majority is loving the carbon fauxber look.

[AudiTT-Quattro]

Who gives a monkey about what it looks like? It's to differentiate it from the original Advantage which looks exactly like that but in black. Both of them perform at the top of the class, that's enough for anyone. If you want a pretty charger that does nothing, I can help you along with that.

Function first.

[Jev]

The only 2 things I see better than the ice is 10amp max charging and backlit screen.

All the rest are gimmiks imo.

[Windsorguy99]

The ice is adjustable from 0.1-10A discharge....slight edge to the Ice...

the difference will be in the peak detection sensitivity and the charging algorithms (the calculations the charger does to tell when everythign is charged properly)

[stephen346]

Do you even know what you are talking about? If you know anything about racing you will know this is the same charger used by the best pro racers in the world to charge their NiMh race packs and is considered one of the best chargers on the market.

For $10.00 MSRP more you can buy this version and charge both your NiMh and LiPo. The case does cost nothing extra. it is simply a way for customers to differentiate between the TWO chargers.

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXJYN5&P=ML

Expect the street price to be a few dollars more than the original.
Hello,

I did see that you did apologize for some if not all of the post.

As a first time person just dropping by this forum I found this very impolite, and this coming from a name that I have I seen in this Hobby for a number of years. If this was my first taste of anything from anyone the helps to support you and your racing, it would be the last time I would think of buying from a company that put up with rude conduct.

I just bought the "Advantage" and it would be great to see a side be side compare of the two.

Then main item that I see noted that I care about is "Input and output short circuit Protection" for the times that you are in a rush and it does happen you do not end up trashing your changer.

Maybe the non-LiPo version does do this, but I do not recall seeing this being Pimped as a selling point.

If It either was able to interface to a PC and allow me to program it, and dump the info down to the PC, and better yet name my packs so it can track the performance of a pack this is better to me then LiPO.

The look of the case I could care less.

I bought this changer in a hope that they would back the changer better then CE and if they came out with a new unit they would offer some type of help to those that own and use their equipment. However after reading this and items on the Orion site, it seems that they too care just as little about those that race and pay for their products and many others.

The ICE changer. . . . . I just can not drop to the personal level of supporting DuraTrax. After seeing the way that they treat clients, this is going back a number of years, and not seeing anything to show that they have changed, I do not see why to way from them either.

I dumped the DE turbo 30 for the Same reason.

Most all of these changers as now to then point of being little pc's, and they may not be able to update to all the new items, but for the most part they should be making these knowing full and well the programming is going to change, and allow for this.

Who is to say they we do not all run right out and buy this newest changer, and then Orion create yet some new one, or the update this one because they had an issue.


I do not want to drop this type of coin and not have something that is not going to be outdated to 3 months.

So far the best I found was the HI-IQ changers, when they were still around


Rick, I was just going to send this to Orion as a basic e-mail, it was the way you started to answer and slam this person that made evil Steve post this in public.

Steve

[stephen346]

Rick,

Since the last post of mine was deleted. Lets try something different.

The Link you have in this post is for the NON-LiPo version - Tower Street price is 179.99. MSRP has never been a good dollor amount to use in this hobby as a changer of this type will NEVER sell for this amount.


Tower does have a link for the new charger that is the one of topic in this thread. http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0091p?&C=PKH&V=ORI. Tower is asking 219.99

So we have the Current on 179.99 and the LiPo version 219.99, so it would cost a racer $40.00 more to have the LiPo version, this is Streer Price not MSRP.

To me $40.00 is more then a few dollars. I did not see the the MSRP price at Tower, so maybe they are wanting to get more money from us racers for the newest version, but it looks more like post wer made prior to the selling price being set.

If you call $40.00 just a few dollars then I would be glad to sell you all the drink you want on any race day (post racing, if this is Beer) for just a few dollars per pitchers.

So is this one more case of Tower taking too much money, or some other issue?

:eek:


Stephen


------Quote from Rick -----
Do you even know what you are talking about? If you know anything about racing you will know this is the same charger used by the best pro racers in the world to charge their NiMh race packs and is considered one of the best chargers on the market.

For $10.00 MSRP more you can buy this version and charge both your NiMh and LiPo. The case does cost nothing extra. it is simply a way for customers to differentiate between the TWO chargers.

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXJYN5&P=ML

Expect the street price to be a few dollars more than the original.

[Rick Hohwart]

Stephen - I understand you want to be able to update your products so that you will never be "out of date". But we find the majority of our customers do not want to or are not capable (or comfortable) making electronics updates (or any for that matter).

Most other consumer products are not capable of accepting updates. How many people are waiting in line for the XBox360 and how many are writing emails to MS asking why they can't update their XBox?

I will look into the Tower price deal. The MSRP of the new charger is $10.00 more than the standard version and nothing else changes (including discount to distributors). At this time I can't answer why this is but I agree that it does not seem right.

[stephen346]

Rick,

Thanks for the reply, and please let me know what you find out from Tower Hobbies. I assume that they just want to milk the new item for all they can.

It looks like they are doing the same thing to the LRP new speed control.

However I am puzzled, I thought that this post had been deleted. I did see my original post when I posted it and then later on I was not able to find the this one or th one that I posted on the Orion’s site.

As for keeping the charger more current it looks like the Hi-IQ spoiled me, when I could just swap out the EPROM’s in the changer and have updates that could be made, unless the update needed a hardware update.

The changes to the Xbox may not be a really good side by side compare, this is why I asked if there was a list of all changes.

If you have a Major change to you PC, for example it can not see your 400 gig hard drive, and their is change is just in the systems BIOS and this is a FLASH BIOS then you are not forced to go and buy a new pc. If you’re PC has an issue of just locking up from time to time this to may be an issue in BIOS. If you now want to install more RAM that what the main board was original built or this too may be able to be over come by us a simple update to the BIOS. I am sure that all Main board /Motherboard manufactures would prefer that you drop more money on a NEW board and not update.

The Xbox example is a change to the processor and the graphics, this is a Major change over all.

I was only asking a simple question because the one person that per the tag line is from Orion did not expand on the “WHY” part .

It does no good to try to argue the point if the change should or should not be updateable without a detailed list of the changes.

So far the only Major item I have seen is the LiPo and this could just be done on the program that is embedded in the EPROM’s chip. Back in the Hi-IQ day this chip alloy had all the programming on how the changer worked, how it read the values in the

Thanks again for at least the reply and at least this post was not deleted.

If you have time you might want to look at the post over on the Orion’s site.

Have a good weekend,

Stephen

[jadroid]

steven and rick, you guys need to calm down, it's just a charger- no need to get red in the face about