whats your LiPo charging station for 1s 2s batteries?

[Conway Stevens]

Looking to get a charging system for LiPo batteries. Im using primarily 1s and 2s batteries for everything I need. Love to see your charging set up and recommendations. Include any added pieces parts you had to get. Thanks!! trying not to spend a fortune.

 

[Conway Stevens]

Was thinking this one. Less than 50 bucks. Had lots of good reviews. Comes with power supply and all the cables plus balance charging.

 

[Voyager1]

I have a similar one to this and it has been very reliable over several years.

 

[Tobor]

I own a SKYRC iMAX B6AC V2 and it works very well for my needs.

I purchased it on Amazon but I had to research all the sellers, as the iMax is heavily cloned and most of those are junk.

 

[tim cubbedge]

Here is one for sale on the forum & similar to what I use:
https://www.rocketryforum.com/threads/tenergy-multifunction-battery-charger.163055/#post-2071159

 

[DeepOvertone]

I have an older model of this guy. Works just fine.

https://www.amazon.com/Venom-LiPo-B...=1&keywords=venom+pro+4&qid=1606746680&sr=8-3

 

[Banzai88]

The Imax B6 is probably the single most cloned/repackaged/added on to charger out there today. Drone guys use it, RC car guys use it, RC Airplane and heli guys use it......... I have two clones that I use for my RC hobbies and they've been active for over 10 years with zero issues.

Some of the clones are more reliable than others. "Comes with a power supply" can be a good thing or a bad thing. All you really need for rocketry charging and to power the chargers is the ability to make 12vDC at 1 or 2 amps, but RC guys like 10amp or better for larger packs. A simple wall wart is usually ok for rocketry, but for $10 or less you can get a corded box power supply like most laptops use that'll source 10 amps.

I have a converted blade server power supply that I use as a bench power supply (12vDC at 47 amps capacity), and for the field I have a modified cigarette lighter adapter so that I can charge at the launch, if necessary.....and I've never found it necessary! Some guys alligator clip to their car battery terminals.

Ultimately you're also probably going to want extender harnesses for charging your various batteries. You'll want ones that match your battery outputs as well as a 2S extender or a 'balance board'.

 

[NateB]

I have the iCharger 206, similar to what is pictured above. The best additions I have are a multi port charging lead with connectors for all the batteries I own and a balance board for 2-6 cell batteries.

 

[TheTank]

The Imax B6 is probably the single most cloned/repackaged/added on to charger out there today. Drone guys use it, RC car guys use it, RC Airplane and heli guys use it......... I have two clones that I use for my RC hobbies and they've been active for over 10 years with zero issues.

Some of the clones are more reliable than others. "Comes with a power supply" can be a good thing or a bad thing. All you really need for rocketry charging and to power the chargers is the ability to make 12vDC at 1 or 2 amps, but RC guys like 10amp or better for larger packs. A simple wall wart is usually ok for rocketry, but for $10 or less you can get a corded box power supply like most laptops use that'll source 10 amps.

I have a converted blade server power supply that I use as a bench power supply (12vDC at 47 amps capacity), and for the field I have a modified cigarette lighter adapter so that I can charge at the launch, if necessary.....and I've never found it necessary! Some guys alligator clip to their car battery terminals.

Ultimately you're also probably going to want extender harnesses for charging your various batteries. You'll want ones that match your battery outputs as well as a 2S extender or a 'balance board'.

View attachment 440502View attachment 440503

I have/user several blade power supplies from servers as well along with all my charging gear for my giant scale RC stuff. I get some odd looks on the flight line sometimes as it probably looks like am powering up the space shuttle but hey, no one complains when I can charge the entire flight line if needed at one time!

 

[Banzai88]

I have/user several blade power supplies from servers as well along with all my charging gear for my giant scale RC stuff. I get some odd looks on the flight line sometimes as it probably looks like am powering up the space shuttle but hey, no one complains when I can charge the entire flight line if needed at one time!

I'm familiar with the looks that I'm sure you get, too! At one point I lucked into a tested lot of 20 power supplies, delivered, for $25.....so I made EVERYONE one and handed them out like tic tacs at a halitosis convention.....all everyone had to do was source their own AC cord.

 

[TheTank]

I'm familiar with the looks that I'm sure you get, too! At one point I lucked into a tested lot of 20 power supplies, delivered, for $25.....so I made EVERYONE one and handed them out like tic tacs at a halitosis convention.....all everyone had to do was source their own AC cord.

LMAO! When I was heavy into RC and competing in IMAC all over the country I was converting them and selling them at cost. Much better and cleaner power than what I found you could buy retail. And charging a half dozen 5000mah 6S packs at once with a generator was fantastic. I saw the use of 9v batteries after I got back into rockets/dual deploy a year ago and wondered why the full jump to Lipo wasnt made in rocketry. Im guessing it is just due to the learning curve if you aren't use to them from something like RC and there is a fire risk if you make a mistake.

I'm using mostly 2S 300 and 430 mah 30+C lipos and after 3 or 4 launches I am still only putting 50mah back in the packs (missleworks altimeters). They have been flawless so far.

 

[Banzai88]

Yep! I think it's just the learning curve, in general. Those of us who came over from NiCad/Nimh batteries into first gen Lipo tech have a familiarity advantage, as we made all the real costly mistakes early on and can easily warn folks and provide 'best practice' lessons without fires or failures.

These are my go to rocketry and tracker batteries, 99% of what I'm launching has one or more of these for various things, depending on size and needs.

The only thing is with the Losi connectors, you have to be sure that you change over the pins to whatever configuration you're using (which is simple).

https://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy...-lipo-pack-fits-nine-eagles-solo-pro-180.htmlhttps://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy-nano-tech-300mah-2s-35-70c-lipo-pack.htmlhttps://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy-nano-tech-600mah-1s-25c-lipo-pack-w-walkera.htmlhttps://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy...975&indexName=hbk_live_magento_en_us_products
I did an experiment a few weeks ago with a new RRC3. 10ish minutes of pad time, 3 minutes of flight, and about 20 minutes of recovery and walk back to the truck and turned it off......6mah put back into the battery!

That 750mah battery once powered my RTX transmitter for 4 days, even though the manual says ~10 hours.....and it recharged without issue.

 

[cerving]

2S's are easy because they have a JST-XH balance plug, there are plenty of chargers on the market that will handle them, as has been previously noted. 1S's... not quite as easy, there are a wide variety of plugs on them, so either you're going to have to make an adapter cable for your JST-XH charger, or just buy a charger that has the right plug. In the case of the little 1S 110 mAH batter that we sell for the Eggtimer Apogee, it's a JST-PH plug, which is smaller than the JST-XH so you can't plug it in directly. It's easier just to buy a little USB charger that's designed for them.

 

[Banzai88]

A lot of folks just end up cutting off the 'strange' connectors and standardizing on the red JST connectors via an Ebay or Amazon bulk pack with 10 pairs of males/females coming pre-wired for under $5.

 

[TheTank]

Yep! I think it's just the learning curve, in general. Those of us who came over from NiCad/Nimh batteries into first gen Lipo tech have a familiarity advantage, as we made all the real costly mistakes early on and can easily warn folks and provide 'best practice' lessons without fires or failures.

These are my go to rocketry and tracker batteries, 99% of what I'm launching has one or more of these for various things, depending on size and needs.

The only thing is with the Losi connectors, you have to be sure that you change over the pins to whatever configuration you're using (which is simple).

https://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy...-lipo-pack-fits-nine-eagles-solo-pro-180.htmlhttps://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy-nano-tech-300mah-2s-35-70c-lipo-pack.htmlhttps://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy-nano-tech-600mah-1s-25c-lipo-pack-w-walkera.htmlhttps://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy...975&indexName=hbk_live_magento_en_us_products
I did an experiment a few weeks ago with a new RRC3. 10ish minutes of pad time, 3 minutes of flight, and about 20 minutes of recovery and walk back to the truck and turned it off......6mah put back into the battery!

That 750mah battery once powered my RTX transmitter for 4 days, even though the manual says ~10 hours.....and it recharged without issue.

yep, i am using some of those myself. Never had an issue with turnigy or zippy lipos. I also found some 2S 30C from venom on Amazon when HK was out of stock that are tiny squares rather that the flatter/wider zippy/turnigy. They have worked great as well.

 

[RocketScott]

For charging the little 150mAh 1S I just ordered one of these:

Adafruit Mini Lipo w/Mini-B USB Jack - USB LiIon/LiPoly charger - v1

 

[cerving]

Adafruit also sells the same charger with MICRO USB or TYPE-C connectors. I ordered a bunch of the Mini-USB chargers accidentally when I meant to order the Micro-USB chargers, and sent them back. Mini-USB is getting rare.

 

[Banzai88]

Adafruit also sells the same charger with MICRO USB or TYPE-C connectors. I ordered a bunch of the Mini-USB chargers accidentally when I meant to order the Micro-USB chargers, and sent them back. Mini-USB is getting rare.

How hard is it to change over a USB port on a board like that?

 

[RocketScott]

Adafruit also sells the same charger with MICRO USB or TYPE-C connectors. I ordered a bunch of the Mini-USB chargers accidentally when I meant to order the Micro-USB chargers, and sent them back. Mini-USB is getting rare.

I just looked through my spare parts bin and found I had a bunch of them

Good call pointing that out. I should have done that when I posted

They also have one that plugs into a standard USB port:


https://www.adafruit.com/product/13...P2sHV0-lt3Qd7vSQRIaWDY9Yb-92mRiQaAt0uEALw_wcB

 

[aarocket]

I own a SKYRC iMAX B6AC V2 and it works very well for my needs.

I purchased it on Amazon but I had to research all the sellers, as the iMax is heavily cloned and most of those are junk.

I have the same one and it works great. As stated I had to do extensive research before buying it from Amazon. At the time Hobby King had the identical one for much more.

 

[HHaase]

So for the 2S batteries, is the standard pretty much the 3 pin JST-XH connector? I'm looking to convert over to more 2S stuff on the things that need it. Been mostly stringing together 1S batteries previously. That gets a bit annoying.

-Hans

 

[cerving]

Yes, virtually all 2s and above LiPo batteries and chargers use the JST-XH balancing plugs.

 

[Conway Stevens]

Any of these batteries should be able to have connectors swapped out either via crimp or solder on a new lead to the old one with a male connection in JST RYC or whatever works best for you if needed. Just be sure to be careful and never short the leads when doing so. this way 1s or 2s or whastever battery your using can be universial for your set up.

 

[g.pitts]

Any of these batteries should be able to have connectors swapped out either via crimp or solder on a new lead to the old one with a male connection in JST RYC or whatever works best for you if needed. Just be sure to be careful and never short the leads when doing so. this way 1s or 2s or whastever battery your using can be universial for your set up.

I've had this idea of changing the connectors on my batteries in the back of my mind for some time now, but haven't gotten around to doing it (yet). I'd personally like to standardize on a legitimate (i.e. not a Chinese knock-off) vendor's latching connector - something similar to the mini-Tamiya connector - on the battery and electronics-bay end of things. Maybe the Molex mini-fit family.

Why would I go to this trouble? When I was preparing for my L2 attempt, I noticed that occasionally my altimeters would power-glitch while bench testing. They would glitch for no obvious reason. The red JST connectors were plugged together well, but I eventually found that moving the wire leading up to said red JST connectors would sometimes (not always) cause a momentary open between the two ends of the connector. The connectors that are used on the batteries I've used (Tenergy from Hobby King) come with a Chinese knock-off of the JST connector. Not all connectors are created equal. I mitigated the issue by designing a wire (and connector) trap into my sled (below), but mitigation is not as good as elimination of an issue.

 

[Banzai88]

I've had this idea of changing the connectors on my batteries in the back of my mind for some time now, but haven't gotten around to doing it (yet). I'd personally like to standardize on a legitimate (i.e. not a Chinese knock-off) vendor's latching connector - something similar to the mini-Tamiya connector - on the battery and electronics-bay end of things. Maybe the Molex mini-fit family.

Why would I go to this trouble? When I was preparing for my L2 attempt, I noticed that occasionally my altimeters would power-glitch while bench testing. They would glitch for no obvious reason. The red JST connectors were plugged together well, but I eventually found that moving the wire leading up to said red JST connectors would sometimes (not always) cause a momentary open between the two ends of the connector. The connectors that are used on the batteries I've used (Tenergy from Hobby King) come with a Chinese knock-off of the JST connector. Not all connectors are created equal. I mitigated the issue by designing a wire (and connector) trap into my sled (below), but mitigation is not as good as elimination of an issue.

View attachment 441074

While I like molex mini fits and have used them in a variety of industry projects.......the simpler and cheaper solution is Deans micro.

 

[g.pitts]

While I like molex mini fits and have used them in a variety of industry projects.......the simpler and cheaper solution is Deans micro.

I'm sure they're solid connectors, but I really want a latching connector. Different philosophies I suppose.