Frustrations with battery connectors and lack of standards

[Velocity Aerospace]

Yeah you can do that and power the positive and negative strands directly. There is a way to set it to record immediately on powerup and you can directly power it on the positive and neutral wires

Awesome. Thank you

 

[Orthotech]

Good safety practice is to cut ONE leg of the connector off, slide on a piece of heat shrink, solder the one leg of the new connector on, shrink the tubing, THEN repeat for the other leg. That 100% prevents any chance of shorting the battery leads.

Hey Cris
Had a question about attaching a pig tail the 2S has stainless wires and my pigtail is copper any hints on how to get these joined?

 

[cerving]

I've never had any problems joining pigtails, if it's like 18 ga and you're going to 22 ga then you may want to actually clip off some of the stands on the 18 ga cable.

 

[cbrarick]

you can actually disassemble the connector and reassemble it with opposite polarity.l.....google that!

 

[MarsLander]

I've never had any problems joining pigtails

How do you join pigtails? (not joking, just learning electronics).

 

[cerving]

Overlap them in-line, twist them together, then solder. You'll want to cover them with some heat shrink tubing, too. You'll need a "third hands" to hold the wires.

 

[DaHabes]

How do you join pigtails? (not joking, just learning electronics).

I use these...

Solder-Loaded Heat-Shrink No-Crimp Butt Splices​

https://www.mcmaster.com/catalog/130/883/6844N11

 

[robopup]

I just had my own little series of unfortunate events.

I fly a lot of single cell lipos with the little jst 1.25mm connectors. I had a little cheapazoidal 1c charger that came with an 8 pack of batteries I bought a while ago. It always felt a little sketchy and at the last launch I went to it finally kicked the bucket, which meant I had to reprep a couple rockets. After that I went out and bought the most expensive 1c charger I could find.

It only has jst (PH?) 2.0mm connectors, so I grabbed an extra male 2.0mm connector out of my box, soldered it up to a 1.25mm and connected a battery to my new fancy charger. It measured 0.00 volts. I tried a couple more batteries, same result. I soldered up another adapter and same result. I started googling for "whoopster reads 0.00 v" and the like and got no hits... huh. After about half an hour of getting worked up about this, the voice in my head said "hey dummy, didn't you skim something about reverse polarity on 1c lipos a couple months ago on TRF?"

This new charger's connectors have the same polarity as my little 1c lipos. My problem was that the two random extra 2.0mm connectors I grabbed out of my box were reversed.

Now six batteries are charging, rockets are getting prepped for this weekend, nature is healing: thanks for this thread!

 

[MidOH]

The only connectors I have are for the lower bulkhead, so it's field removable. Top bulkhead and battery are hardwired. Even the 9v's are hardwired.

Leftover habit from olde school RC.

 

[BEC]

Funny this thread should pop right up now as I'm literally about to grab the soldering iron and pull the power socket off a Starlight Mini to turn it around so that it will be compatible with my existing 1s cells and chargers.

 

[OverTheTop]

How do you join pigtails? (not joking, just learning electronics).

You can strip a bit of insulation off the end of each, then 'tin' the end by adding solder. Once both are tinned just hold them together and apply the soldering iron to join them. If you have put a piece of heatshrink over the wire you can slide it into place now and shrink to insulate the joint.

Wiring standard IPC620 says the length stripped should be at least three wire diameters long to meet the workmanship requirements.

If you use clear heatshrink anyone inspecting your rocket will always be able to see if the joint is good or not.