I just got a SKY RAY S6 light for biking. The light itself is great, however it came with a 18650x4 battery pack that sucks.
Is there something like a 4 battery holder (2x2 ideally) that I can pop any 18650 batter in to that can power this light? (it will need the correct connection…) If not, what is the best way to upgrade this battery pack?
I’m new at this, and have never soldered, so ideally the solution would not involve solder. But if no solder free solution exist im willing to learn. I would like to easily be able to swap out individual cells in the pack.
The battery pack the light came with will not hold a charge at all, hot off the charger it last for a little while (ive only tested it for about 10 min), but if I take it off the charger and let the pack sit for a day then plug in the light, it die in < 1 minute.
There are battery sellers which offer welding the cells together.
I have seen this on eBay when I was watching some Samsung 20R. I also have seen this on the enerdan store.
But for 4 cells i would say it is no problem to solder them manually.
A bit of flux on the battery and go for it. I have done this just before some days…
But I do not like to do this, too. Especially when soldering the negative side the whole battery gets warmed…
If your shy about building your own, you might try something along the lines of this -> 6x 18650 battery pack
I however, build mine own, and its really easy, but somewhat involved. The last pack I built used 8x panny 3400’s, 2 sets of 4 parallel, in a series, for 8.4v. You have to use a hobby charger to discharge every cell down to the exact same point (~3v), to ensure no over charging in the final pack. After that, I used thin copper sheeting soldered to the terminals (wires would work too), and just taped it all up basically.
Yeah, soldering li-ions is best left to people with lots of experience, who have a good machine, and are working in some kind of evacuated blast-resistant container. Fasttech sell battery cases that come in 1-4 cell series configuration. Get a pair of 2s cases, put better wires in them, and glue them back to back. Solder the + wires together and you have a 2s2p 18650 pack.
2s2p will provide 12.6v fully charged just of the charger, the voltage range of your light is 5.4v-12v so yes it will do.
As for the plug, just make sure you know which wire is positive and negative, then just cut the plug off the old pack as close to the old packs batteries as possible so you’ll have enough cable to attach to the new pack.
If you're feeling real fancy, you could get new boards made up for convert one of those battery packs into 2s2p. Make a few extra to sell to others. I'm sure you'd sell quite a few.