N5RMQ

I am a newbie to this electric business. I am ready to buy my first lipo battery and need some info. I am not sure how many plugs come out of a lipo. IMy ESC has a male plug that looks like a "T" So I suppose that my battery should have a Female plug like that. Also I believe it needs a Futaba plug to connect to the reciever in the batt position. Also to plug the battery into the charger to recharge where does that happen? Are these standard plugs that come with every battery?do I need to specify what I need when I order the battery?What is the "T" looking plug called?Whew!! Thanks for the help poor old newbie will get there someday.

speedy72vega

Welcome to the hobby N5RMQ.
The battery has 2 connectors. The connector with the heavy gauge black and red wires is the battery power. The other connector is the balance connector. It will have multiple smaller wires. The number of wires and terminals depends on how many cells the battery pack has.
The 'T' looking connector is most likely a Deans connector. Your battery will most likely come with either no connectors, or bullet style connectors, depending on what brand you buy. Some brands will come with Deans connectors on them. If your pack comes with anything other than Deans, you will need to buy a female Deans connector and solder it on to your battery wires. Make ABSOLUTELY sure that you get the polarities right, red wire to +, black wire to -. This is extremely important. Also, in the event that you do have to solder the Deans connector on, make sure you only work with 1 wire at a time, NEVER strip both wires at the same time. If you short the red and black wires together accidentally, bad things will happen to your battery!!!!!
You are correct, the battery will need to have a female Deans connector to hook to your ESC, however, the balance lead DOES NOT connect to your receiver!!!!
Your ESC will most likely have a built in BEC that powers your receiver unless it says 'Opto only', in which case you will need an external receiver battery to power your servos.
Read the label on your ESC and see if it has a BEC. If it does, it will most likely say how many amps it can handle for servo power. Your ESC connector that goes to the throttle position on the receiver will power the servos if it has a BEC.
How you recharge your battery depends on what type of charger you have. You will need a balance charger designed to charge LiPo batteries. Some of the lower end or walwart chargers charge through the balance connector, the higher end, higher charge rate chargers will connect to both the power connector, and the balance connector. There are 2 main types of balance connectors, the JST style, and the E-flite type (I can't remember the exact name of that connector ). Most good chargers will come with the proper adapters for both types.
Hope this helps.

Barlingbomber

Hi,

Like the first poster I am just moving into Electric and LiPos. My first impression is that most battery makers should be lined up against the wall and shot!! Would it be too difficult for any 2 suppliers in our hobby to use the same kind of plugs. I bought a bunch of adapters with my LiPo Charger (FMA Direct Cellpro). The charger is great and easy to use but none of the adapters available will charge this new Tera Hobby Lipo I bought for my 3d Electric. The LiPo looks great and is 1300 mAh for a size you would normally get 950 or so but without a plug, its useless. The question is does anyone know where I can get something to adapt this plug to one of the more recognised plugs (Thunder Power, Align, Flightpower, etc) or failing that where i can get an Align plug (which is a 3 wire for 2 cells LiPo plug like the Tera Hobby one). Any help or advice would be most welcome as this LiPo is useless until I find a way to charge it and I don't want to buy a Tera Hobby charger just for one LiPo!!

thanks guys in advance

And remember, the fact that average guy is really dub means that half of them are even dumber!!

JustErik

I can help with this one. I use CellPro chargers exclusively so I feel your pain. NOBODY (except FMA) uses the CellPro balance tap, so you either have to buy a buttload of adapters or do what I started doing. Buy a box full of these:



Tanic Packs sells them for only $1.50 each and shipping, if I remember correctly, is only $2.00 This is much MUCH cheaper than getting them directly from FMA. Anyway, once you get them, use this document from the FMA site to learn how to replace the factory installed balance tap with the one above. It's not too hard, it's not too expensive to do and it's way better than keeping track of adapters. Some folks aren't to comfortable cutting up the wires on their new lipos, but if you study up a bit, take your time and work carefully, the risk is minimal.

Barlingbomber

Thanks. I think it makes sense. Like you said I'm a bit nervous about setting my house or myself on fire but I will study up as you suggest and see what I can do. One thing that confuses me is that the different LiPo brands/balance charging plugs seem to have different numbers of wires coming out of the battery even though they have the same number of cells. I guess the article will tell me how to handle that but it doesn't immediately seem like they are going to be compatible. But anyway if I can make it work that's the way I'll go,

Thanks again,

Phil

Barlingbomber

Hi,
I just bought a 2.4GHz adapter kit that comes with two 7 Ch receivers from Tower Hobbies. I have a Hitec Prism 7 and Eclipse7 transmitters both of which have worked fine for years the spectra, 72MHz and 35 MHZ modules (I used to live in the UK)I have for them. I attached the aerial and plugged in the 2.4 GHz module in as per the instructions and then followed the steps for setting up the Transmitter Receiver link in Normal Mode (press the button on the module, switch on then release the button etc)

• On the Eclipse set neither of the LED lights (Blue or Red )come on
• On the Prism set the red LED light comes on but is not flashing.

The blue light does not light up on either set

On the receivers, again I followed the instructions, pressed the button and then plugged in the battery, then released the button. On both receivers the red light came on and flashes but nothing else happens.

From the posts above I see I may have to do some work on the Prism 7 but I am at a loss to understand why the Eclipse 7 won't work at all when it works fine with a spectra or 72 MHz module plugged in the back???

any ideas?

By the way I also plugged in a receiver battery and servos to the receivers to check if the connection had already been set up but the servos did not move when I moved the sticks so I guess not.



Phil

JustErik

I agree, it's confusing. A general rule of thumb is that the balance tap needs one more wire than the number of cells. A 3S needs 4 wires, for instance. If there is more than "cell count + 1", some aren't used. All the packs I've wired have the extra wires next to the pack positive, which has always been red on the ones I've done. When all else fails, you can always put a volt meter on the various leads to identify which is which.

Barlingbomber

Thanks, Ill go get myself a volt meter to be on the safe side but this is going to make life a lot easier,