Keying Bullet Connectors - Confused

[rickwess]

When keying the bullet connectors I've always thought:

batteries:
female on positive
male on negative

esc:
male on positive
female on negative

I just noticed that this product from the folks at Hifei have it the other way around.

hef-Cap8mm-2_medium.jpg

What am I missing?

[Chilli]

There is no written standard and many of us do it the way you describe. Unfortunately for us Hifei chose to do it the other way. However... the more connectors, the more resistance so I would look for other alternatives.

[rickwess]

I wasn't looking looking to purchase it, I was just poking around and noticed the keying they used.

These are batteries after all. What logic says to expose the hot lead?

[kacordy]

Who is Hifei?

Thanks, Allen

[gsbuickman]

They're a Chinese company that makes top flite esc's for boats and things. As cheap as they sell them on fleabay, a lot of people swear their junk. Their sorely misinformed.

http://www.fliermodel.com/en/index.asp

[tlandauer]

I also use the "Red Hot Female" set up on the battery.
Pros and cons of the Hifei set up:
Advantage: Been to a SAW event recently and alot of seasoned racers use females on both terminals of the batteries, advantage is when you are under pressure and in a hurry, there is less of a chance for the exposed terminal to come in contact with anythng that might cause a short should one forget to cover or lose the cap for the connector.
Disadvantage: Since they are not keyed, I have also witnessed someone got the polarity wrong and the ESC was toasted instantly. ( at another race event)
Lesson that I learned is that I double check while I am connecting and thinking my next step.
Alot of strange things could happen, I run 4s2p and one time I connected the two batteries in series and I could not figure out why I had a set of extra unused bullets on the ESC, good thing that I am a slow person, I caught my mistake before the dreadful 8 beeps and the magic smoke!

[gsbuickman]

I agree with Tlandauer, he beat me to it. I always use the double female with all my packs, whether they're lipo, li-ion or NiMH cells. Maybe its just me being mechanically oriented, but I don't necessarily match bullet colors per say. I always try and color code my wires cause bullets are usually wrapped black, or covered with silicone tubing anyway to prevent arcing between them......

[Southwest]

I have female + and male - but cover male with a 1" water line hose so no accident touching for shorts.

[rickwess]

Who is Hifei?

They make the SwordFish ESCs.

I like the idea of keying the connectors because my big fat fingers/hands tend to obscure the view inside a cramped hatch. When I had two female bullets on the battery leads I've caught myself a few times connecting the first set of bullets backwards. Good thing I religiously move my meat hooks out of the way to look around before connecting the 2nd pair of bullets.

[mongo]

I use XT150 connectors everywhere. Very happy with them.

[gsbuickman]

I use XT150 connectors everywhere. Very happy with them.

Great connectors. A lot of musicians use them as well. They are 6mm though, a bit overkill and a bit pricey. If you like 5.5mm bullets, check these out, 20 pair for $10..

http://www.ebay.com/itm/190897663137?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

[mongo]

There's no such thing as overkill :P
It's well worth having plastic housings and not having to put rubber/heatshrink caps on bullets to avoid shorts during transport.

[siberianhusky]

When I started out I thought they were great as well, can't hook them up wrong, then the different boats started arriving, switched to bullets pretty quickly.

[mongo]

I prefer to solder everything myself to make sure all the solder joints are solid, so that's not a big downside for me.

[siberianhusky]

For me it was adding more connectors to the circuit so I could run pairs of packs in series. Added resistance and more failure points, plus one day I forgot to bring the series harness to the pond and couldn't run. Bullets are just a much simpler and cleaner solution. Plus all the go fast guys have tried just about every connector out there yet for some reason all of them run bullets in their setups drawing some serious power. Figure they have done the testing so why bother re-inventing the wheel so to speak.