I have a t-beam and am trying to make a low profile case so i will be removing the standard 18650 battery and replacing it with a slimmer Li-Po battery.
Does anyone know which pins are are directly attached to the battery pads on the back of the board? I still want to use the integrated charging and power monitoring chip.
Hi @b8b8 looking at the pinout, there is no vbat exposed other than the 18650 socket vbat 
Positive battery pin goes through a 2A fuse before going to pin 35 and 34 of the power management IC.
ok, i guess ill just tap into the pads directly on the back of the board. o well.
You might want to set the charge current down from default too.
hmmm, maybe this would be better.
The default charge rate is 450ma. Should be fine for even the smaller Lipo cells.
The battery b8b8 linked are 350mAh. 450mA is over the 1C recommended charge rate for Lipo and way above the 1/2C limit most manufacturers suggest for longest lifespan.
i would be running 2 (maybe 3) of them in parallel. i didn’t make that clear in my post.
My design isn’t finished yet.
Very nice case! Well done!
Looks like a two-way radio, cool 
Li-ion: https://aliexpress.ru/item/4001131054629.html
GPS-Antenna: https://aliexpress.ru/item/33028578709.html
Very cool! I’ve been going the other way with designing for a bigass 26650 cell and relocating the display and antenna:
Very nice enclosure, are you sharing the files on thingyverse?
Yes, once I have the design a little more finalized, I’ll post the files on my blog along with build notes.
What a clever idea!! I’m just looking for new ideas to implement rechargable and bigger batteries on my T-Beam V1 devices. Even to put a better GP antenna.
Do you have any “dummies guide” to show how to do it?
How do you charge the 1800mAh battery once it is empty? Where do you connect it in the board?
I’m sorry if I am doing silly questions but I am just starting with meshtastic and T-Beam devices.
