Has anyone been able to connect a LiPo battery to the MKR1000 without replacing the connector (or making an adapter)? I have not found any batteries whose native connectors will work with the MKR1000. I had to buy a set of JST PHR-2 crimp-on compatible connectors and replace the ones on the batteries.
You can buy them from Adafruit with the connectors ready to go. The downside of this is that they can no longer be shipped by air. Ground shipping to the lower 48 is allowed, but it takes longer and I don't know what the rest of the world can get.
The batteries from PS4 controllers work fine but you need to swap the VCC and GND cables over as they are in the wrong order for the MKR.
Its quick and easy to change them and the connector works fine.
Used some stick on velcro and it sits under the MKR just fine.
Got a batch from China for my cheapo quad.
Turns out the also fit the JST on the MKR
Nice! Thanks for the responses. Who knew these batteries were really easy to find. How hard would it be for Arduino to put the word out on where to find these batteries?
You cant expect Arduino to support cheap Chinese manufacturers of clone and knock off gear.
May as well take a knife to your own throat from a business perspective.
Mine were the extended fly time lipos for the SYMA quad so dont forget to make sure they are 1000 mAh or above !
Hello!
I agree.
I have five here. Two are 1000Mah types from Sparkfun, and one is considerably larger, don't know its size.
The other two were selected by Adafruit originally for their wearable line. Right now my device is blinking happily on one of those batteries.
As for why they can only travel by ground, please lookup the battery problems on the 787 Dreamliner. The problem was originally traced back to the supplier of the individual batteries, not who wired the packs. The whole business has soured the air transportation business on that subject.
I have a question for everyone who has used the "JST PH" 2 pin style connectors to connect to the battery connector on their MKR board.
From looking at the datasheet for the JST PH connector series, it appears that any 2 pin female connector of this series will work with the MKR's connector. I thought it might eventually be useful to have the option of connecting a battery to my MKR boards and none of the batteries in my LiPo stash have the right one, so I bought the cheapest listing for those connectors on eBay. They do plug in to the MKR board, though it takes a good push. The problem is that I find that unplugging it is extremely difficult, where I need to use something like pliers because I simply can't do it by hand. It's so much force that I'm concerned about ripping the connector off the board and it's also inconvenient. Looking at the connectors, there is no obvious physical incompatibility.
The eBay order came with male and female connectors and I find if I connect both eBay connectors together it take much less force to plug and unplug.
So my question is whether other people have had this same sort of experience with the difficult connector removal, or did I just get an out of tolerance batch of Chinese connectors?
I found the ones from the PS controllers fitted a lot better but needed the + and - swapped over.
Other than that I had taken a box cutter and shaved a tiny amount off on other ones (Chinese).
They now fit a lot better.
Making a flying lead as you did is a much nicer way too. I buy these for multiple purposes.
Not had one fail and polarised too.
Bob.
ballscrewbob:
I buy these for multiple purposes.
Do those fit the connector on the MKR boards? I have some of the common JST RCY 2 pin connectors that look just like that, but they are significantly wider than the MKR's connector.
I don't really mind having to hack something together for my own purposes, but I was hoping to find a cheap and readily available source of the JST PH connectors that will work right out of the box to help out people here on the forum who ask about it. The question has come up repeatedly here on the forum and I'd like to have a good answer. I know from personal experience how frustrating it is when all too often the only information you get about a product is: "it's a JST connector". OK, thanks so much, that narrows it down to one of the several hundred different connector types manufactured by JST.
Sorry per.
I meant as a fly lead from the real JST connector to whatever battery to ease connection.
Am pretty sure the pin on the real JST is smaller than those on most other connectors.
Bob.