i worry about the availability of such things in the future, the manual says the battery is custom and to only use TE batteries; is that accurate or are there alternative battery options?
looks pretty custom to me. However there are batteries of very similar size, although they do not have the little tabs in the ends (which is prob what makes them “custom”).
this is a little trick companies do, where the cell is basically the exact same as 100,000 others but there is a little mod to the plastic case of the lipo to make it fit in some small unique way.
kinda lame IMO
It’s just alittle groove in the plastic, you could probably cut a similar groove in the plastic case of a off brand battery… it maybe someone will make a replacement off brand one?
Hopefully TE will sell spares as well.
Thinking about drone batteries, the “custom” part can also be the electronics onboard, ensuring the power is regulated and no damage is done to the gear.
I don’t want to appear too naive, of course it’s also business related (especially for LiPo that last not very long) but I don’t necessarily see evil everywhere neither 
FWIW OP-1 battery was first class, mine is still working pretty fine after all these years. I can’t think about any other gear the battery of which lasted that long.
2 Likes
TE deffinetly marketed the opz as being able to replace the battery, so they will offer batteries at some point, probably gonna be a while though.
Could be!
But For a single cell lipo that just outputs a nominal 3.7v and isn’t producing high current, i HIGHLY doubt there is any special electronics in the lipo. Aside from maybe an overcharge overdischarge protection (and maybe not even that)
Drones have to balance multiple cells and deliver high amp energy and closely watch temp and all that. I mean, its making bleeps and bloops versus actual flight… so.
1 Like