Hoping someone can just point me in the general right direction here. I have a project with some LED lights powered by a 12v 3500mAh battery pack, which is 4 batteries in a row and bare leads going to the led strip and a barrel plug to charge the batteries. Everything works correctly except the battery pack doesn't fit where I need it to. The battery pack I need is the same batteries but configured top to bottom, something like this:
However, I cannot find this type of battery configuration on amazon or anywhere else with the same connection types (bare leads and barrel plug), only the jst plug type, which means I then need to plug that into a battery management board of some type, which I don't really know how to do, or to buy these batteries custom made from china which costs more than I wanted to spend since it has to travel so far.
Is there any place that sells this battery with the connectors I need that I just don't know about? Or do I need the battery management board? Any help is appreciated, thank you
Of course you do. This is not a beginner project, as LiPo batteries can burst into flames or even explode if mistreated.
A properly designed charger board and a separate overdischarge and overcurrent battery protection board are absolutely required.
Four cells in series are in the "4S" configuration, and most properly designed chargers require individual connections to each cell, to ensure cell charge balancing.
For a beginner, NiMH cells are much safer to handle and don't required the finicky battery protection ICs. You can buy NiMH cell packs in many configurations, along with a simple wall charger.
It appears you want four batteries connected in a series. You will need to find a holder for them. Batteries do not normally have any leads, so you will need to add a conductor at the top and bottom of the stack and connect a wire to each one. I would first search for a 4S 18650 holder.
thank you all so much for the replies, I recognize that I'm a little out of my league on this issue. What I was using was this battery off amazon, and it has the board inside it, doing all the over discharge and protection, so I didn't have to worry about any of that, just plug & play, but the size and shape doesn't fit in my application, that's why I was looking for the same battery, just in a different configuration, long and skinny to fit it where I need it.
If I do need a BMS now, is there one that has the JST female connectors and the same DC5521 barrel plug already pre-configured so I don't have to do any soldering? I'm just trying to make this as plug&play as possible. Thank you again!
Well the one I was using for testing was a 12v 1500 mah, I think it has 4 batteries in it. It powers my project (LED lights) for approx 36 hours before needing to be charged, and that works fine for now. I was just working off the volts I needed (12v) and the mah as the power of the batteries and how long they would last.
