Lipo batteries and connectors

The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
I don't have a blue raven, but in RC we would call the white ones 2-pin (or 3-pin in the case of the 2S battery) JST connectors (or balance connectors) and the red one on the 2S battery a female JST battery connector or plug connector (that also has 2 pins). There is confusion on this, because I think JST is a brand that makes many connectors, but the common name for the little ones is just JST.

Edited due to far more exact and helpful replies below.
 
Last edited:
I believe the Red connector is a JST-RCY, the larger white connectors are JST-PH.

Small white ones you’re looking for are probably some flavor of JST. If you’ve got some good metric calipers, measure the pitch (distance between the center of the two pins) and check the series listing in the Wikipedia article. Or just ping @Adrian A and ask if he know, since it’s a Blue Raven.
 
The polarity of the middle one is backwards from that used in Featherweight (and other rocketry) products and would likely fry whatever it is connected to. You can swap the pins in the connector or make a polarity-swapping extension cable if you really want to use that battery.


The bottom one has a 1.25mm pitch connector. You can get compatible cables here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JJ4Y3DL?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
Thanks so much and yes I will triple check polarity.
 
The polarity of the middle one is backwards from that used in Featherweight (and other rocketry) products and would likely fry whatever it is connected to. You can swap the pins in the connector or make a polarity-swapping extension cable if you really want to use that battery.
That is the polarity used in flying models (small quadcopters mostly, but also helicopters and even fixed-wing models that use single cells). Since both the cells I already have on hand and the chargers for them are set up this way, when I built my Eggfinder IONs I put the socket on the board in the reverse of what Cris calls for, to match most of my other equipment.

It is a pain that there are groups of users of cells like this (rocketry products, Arduino stuff) that do it one way and other users (RC modelers and maybe more) who do it the other way.
 
There IS a reason for that...

When we designed the Apogee and ION and decided to put a JST-PH connector on the board, we had to decide which polarity to use... the R/C polarity or the Adafruit/SparkFun polarity. The problem with the R/C polarity is that a lot of 1S batteries using JST-PH's are the kind with the stubby connector instead of a "pigtail", which would have been completely useless with an altimeter. There are just way too many R/C batteries too, and we needed to be able to get the exact same battery in quantity consistently. So, we chose the Adafruit/SparkFun batteries, which we can readily obtain not only from those vendors but from DigiKey and Mouser too. The two sizes that we sell, 110 mAH and 350 mAH are unlikely to be discontinued anytime soon.
 
I have a Blue Raven and a Power Perch I got from Featherweight. The batteries being shipped from Featherweight now are a bit longer than the old ones they used to send out.

I say this because I also got a sled from Additive Aerospace for my A/V bay and I needed to drill a new hole for the thing that holds the battery in place. There was just enough room on the part to drill the hole near the edge and have it provide a tight fit with the new longer battery.

[I am kind of assuming that the batteries are now longer, rather than the sled having been sized incorrectly in the first place.]

https://www.additiveaerospace.com/collections/altimeter-sleds/products/98mm-dual-power-perch-sled

I think it all worked out in the end, but that part from Additive Aerospace should be sized to match up with the newest parts.
 
Last edited:
Be carful buying pigtails or wired connectors from Amazon for the small white JST connectors.... the polarity is almost always backwards, I have yet to buy one that is correct. The red JST connectors have always been correct.
 
I have a Blue Raven and a Power Perch I got from Featherweight. The batteries being shipped from Featherweight now are a bit longer than the old ones they used to send out.

I say this because I also got a sled from Additive Aerospace for my A/V bay and I needed to drill a new hole for the thing that holds the battery in place. There was just enough room on the part to drill the hole near the edge and have it provide a tight fit with the new longer battery.

[I am kind of assuming that the batteries are now longer, rather than the sled having been sized incorrectly in the first place.]

https://www.additiveaerospace.com/collections/altimeter-sleds/products/98mm-dual-power-perch-sled

I think it all worked out in the end, but that part from Additive Aerospace should be sized to match up with the newest parts.

You are correct. The batteries are now longer, and the shorter 1S batteries are unobtanium (the #1 reason I hate Lipos!).

I alerted Andrew at Additive to this situation 3 years ago in another thread. I also had email communication with him in October and gave him dimensions of the new batteries. In January, he said he printed a couple longer sleds and was going to send me one. Then, nothing. He went dark. I gave up and made my own PowerPerch sled out of plywood.

If you bought the PowerPerch sled recently, you may want to question Additive about it. He should not be selling incompatible sleds at this point.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top