Thrift shop find

[Matthew_Armeni]

While I was cruisung th thrift shops yesterday (great place to look for gifts) I came into the electronics section. I found 2 DELL laptop battery packs for 1.98 each. 3.96 together and then with my military discount only 3.56. They're 14.4v 2700 mah. I already took them apart and it appears they are in a 4S2P configuration. The cells aren't what I was expecting, they're like giant double A's. My multimeter is broke so I'll have to go to RadioShack and pick up another to see what condition they're in. If they're OK then I plan on using them 2S4P in my parking lot touring car (HPI rally). Evn if they are bad or turn out to not work it's still fun to do. Here's some pics.....

[johnrobholmes]

They wont take the discharge, they are probably good for only 2c.

[Arct1k]

Maybe useful for RX or TX packs but that's about it I would have thought...

I thought they also had circuitly to limit drain and LVC

[MTBikerTim]

That would be a good idea to use them as an tx pack wouldn't it?

[Serum]

if you don't have a UBEC, then yes. though the voltage might be a tad too high.

[sikeston34m]

I have tried this as a receiver pack before and it does work. It does tend to speed up the servo's though. Which may or may not be a good thing, depending on the setup.

These are 18650 cells. Most are rated at a max. amp drain of 5 amps, but that's the absolute max. They don't live very long when drained at 5 amps even.

The built in protection for a laptop battery, is in the form of a circuit board along side the cells in the pack. This protection is removed, unless you install the board with them. I'm sure that's it, on the end by the contacts.

I have used them to build flashlights, fans, and various battery powered thingies. If you want to put pcb protection on them, you can. But you have to purchase the pcb's for the voltage of the application. batteryspace.com has those in different Series setups.