AA and AAA battery charger problems?
John Doe
Need a charger that will forewarn the failure of AA and AAA (Energizer
Duracell Kodak) batteries, avoid killing them, or whatever is going
wrong with my NiMH batteries. Or maybe it's just be a lower number of
recharge cycles than I expected.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16817355014
Are any of the MH-C9000 AA/AAA chargers completely silent? I
understand why some electronics make noise, but IMO an electronic
device that isn't intended to produce sound shouldn't be audible.
(BTW... I realize that question might sound like a troll to a
Maha/POWEREX fan boy, but I seriously dislike high-pitch device
noise.)
The next most discussed charger appears to be the La Crosse BC-900.
Early firmware versions of that one might have had problems with
overheating? Is the new La Crosse RS900 a better charger, or at least
guaranteed to be more reliable?
http://www.lacrossetechnology.fr/en/P-16-229--0-D1--rs900-our-
products-specialized-appliances.html
Anything comparable to those two?
Thanks.
John Doe
regions. Anyone know where to buy the updated firmware BC900?
ASAAR
> Need a charger that will forewarn the failure of AA and AAA (Energizer
> Duracell Kodak) batteries, avoid killing them, or whatever is going
> wrong with my NiMH batteries. Or maybe it's just be a lower number of
> recharge cycles than I expected.
A new charger probably won't help. The devices that NiMH cells
are used in are the real battery killers, if you allow them to
mistreat the cells.
ransley
How many cycles did you get, how old are they, I never get the
advertised battery life, maybe 1/4 or much less. I dont really know.
Sanyo Eneloops dont self discharge like other Nimh, try a set. Does
your charger have a built in voltmeter you can read, a handheld unit
you can check how they are doing, it could be just one bad cell.
Tzortzakakis Dimitrios
Ο "John Doe" <jd...@usenetlove.invalid> έγραψε στο μήνυμα
news:snWYk.7879$D32....@flpi146.ffdc.sbc.com...
will do. I have a charger I bought from Lidl www.lidl.gr (or www.lidl.de)
for 20 euros, tronic brand. I have a maglite that probably was left for days
on inside my toolbox. The Sanyo NiMHs were of course toast (I got a blinking
red light on the charger). I could rejuvenate them, however, by interrupting
the circuit, by removing the battery and then connecting it again, to let
the charger make a fresh attempt. After a couple of dozen attempts I got a
steady red light, and the batteries got charged, and work ok now. The one I
wasn't able so far to save was an 9 V NiMH which I used on a water leakage
detector that was left out in the rain, I always get a blinking red light,
even after many attempts, I suspect the water soaked the innards of the
battery.
--
Tzortzakakis Dimitrios
major in electrical engineering
mechanized infantry reservist
hordad AT otenet DOT gr
John Doe
> I could rejuvenate them, however, by interrupting the circuit, by
> removing the battery and then connecting it again, to let the
> charger make a fresh attempt. After a couple of dozen attempts I
> got a steady red light, and the batteries got charged, and work ok
> now. The one I wasn't able so far to save was an 9 V NiMH which I
> used on a water leakage detector that was left out in the rain, I
> always get a blinking red light, even after many attempts,
After four dozen attempts?
That's the experience I had with Energizer's one-hour charger (the
one with four slots around the center of the charger) and AAA
batteries. Someone here had the same experience with the same
charger (unfortunately, the Google USENET archive server is messed
up so I can't find the posts).
Removing and reinserting the battery dozens of times is for the
birds, IMO. Instead of wasting my money on cheap chargers (Energizer
Duracell Kodak), I probably should have bought an analyzer years
ago.
Good luck.
SMS
> Someone here had the same experience with the same
> charger (unfortunately, the Google USENET archive server is messed
> up so I can't find the posts).
If you're using Firefox, try using Internet Explorer. There is some
problem with Firefox and Google Groups searches. I.e. if I have the URL
"http://groups.google.com/groups/search?hl=en&q=AA+charger&btnG=Search"
in Firefox, it shows that there should be three pages of results, but
none of the results actually show up. In Internet Explorer it works fine.
Fred Wilko
wrote:
What usually happens in 9v cells is that one of the smaller pancake stacked
cells in the middle of a 6-7 (1.2-1.5v) cell stack has reversed polarity. (If
you ever tore one apart you'd find all the stacked lower-voltage cells inside.)
These can sometimes be saved by temporarily applying a charge two to three times
the normal voltage. Doing so briefly but repeatedly. When out on a trek and
still near my vehicle and a much-needed cell has reversed voltage I use a small
500mAh cigarette-lighter voltage adapter and turn up the voltage on it. (Those
cheap ones you can get at most any $1-store.) Using bare-wire contacts to
quickly brush them against the ends of a battery. Tapping the end of the cell
with the one end of a wire while keeping the other end of the battery grounded
to the other wire contact. It doesn't matter which wire + or - that you use for
the intermittent brush contact, either will work. Just make sure that you are
applying the + wire to the + end of the battery and - to -. After about 20-50
tries the battery will reverse polarity back to normal and start taking a charge
again. Trying to get a cell in the middle of a stack in series is more difficult
and tedious but it can be done. When in campgrounds and people would come to me
as the "resident computer/photographer guru", they'd sometimes mention their
cell phone wouldn't take a charge anymore. They typically have 3-4 cells in
series in their cell-phone's power-pack. I would do the above and fix their
phones for them. With huge sighs of relief from the owner and an invite to a
nice campfire and meal for having performed a "miracle" for them. Some cells
inside of a series-stack just refuse to revert polarity back to normal, but I'd
say that's only about 1 out of 20 where that happens. Usually a stubborn stack
of cells can be coerced by using slightly higher voltages than what was first
tried.
Try the above with any 12-24v low amperage power supply on that 9v battery, see
if you can't fix it.
Anything above 9v might work, the higher the better, but don't go nuts with
voltage. I wouldn't go above about 3x's the original rating if doing this by
hand. For higher voltages you'd need an electronic circuit that controls the
pulse length. I built a NiCd cell restorer long ago that works on this
principle, briefly applying a 200v low-amperage charge to the cell, to burn out
internal "whiskers" that form between plates. Making them able to take a charge
again. But that pulse length is rated in milliseconds or you could blow up the
battery at those voltages if applied too long.
p.s. Keep at least one of those older non-digital chargers handy for those cells
that won't register as "good" on a newer digital charger. I put a battery into
an old charger that's not so fussy about low-voltage levels to get the cell to
start taking a charge when later put in the digital chargers. (Like you do by
getting it to put some voltage into the cell by inserting it a few times to have
the charger apply a voltage/amperage check, to get it to finally register with a
workable voltage.) It usually only takes about a minute of putting a low-drained
battery into an old charger before the newer chargers will accept that battery
as "good-as-new".
I wouldn't doubt that the low-voltage limits are set in digital chargers
primarily so they can sell more batteries. How many people must be throwing away
perfectly good batteries just because their charger's red light blinks. None the
wiser that all they really needed to do was get a few electrons in that battery
to get it started up again.
Fred Wilko
>These can sometimes be saved by temporarily applying a charge two to three times
>the normal voltage. Doing so briefly but repeatedly. When out on a trek and
>still near my vehicle and a much-needed cell has reversed voltage I use a small
>500mAh cigarette-lighter voltage adapter and turn up the voltage on it. (Those
>cheap ones you can get at most any $1-store.) Using bare-wire contacts to
>quickly brush them against the ends of a battery. Tapping the end of the cell
>with the one end of a wire while keeping the other end of the battery grounded
>to the other wire contact. It doesn't matter which wire + or - that you use for
>the intermittent brush contact, either will work. Just make sure that you are
>applying the + wire to the + end of the battery and - to -. After about 20-50
>tries the battery will reverse polarity back to normal and start taking a charge
>again.
p.p.s. I forgot to mention this. It could save you lots of trial and error time
if you do this in conjunction with a meter.
If you have a small volt-meter attached to the battery you can watch the needle
(old analog type) or digital multimeter numbers jump into the positive and stay
there after the final successful intermittent contact. Then you don't have to
apply the higher voltage anymore and just put it in a regular battery charger as
normal. It helps too to put it in the battery charger soon after you get a
successful switch-polarity-and-stay condition. Otherwise leaving it sit awhile
after accomplishing that might let it revert to its unusable reversed-polarity
state again, only not so severe, usually.
The greater amount of correct voltage you can get into the battery, the more
easily it will stay in proper polarity. Think of it like two slightly leaky
buckets on a balance beam. One bucket weighing a few milligrams more than the
other. That slightly heavier one is the one that you want to keep empty.The
slightly lighter bucket is the one that you want to always keep heavier. A few
drops in the lighter bucket might not keep the balance tipped to the correct
side, but a cupful of water will keep it there for a much greater length of
time. A full bucket will hold polarity for months, unless it leaks out so low
that it tips backward again.
John Doe
For what it's worth:
I ordered the MH-C9000 (from Thomas Distributing) instead of the RS900.
I like the fact the RS 900 allows programming all four slots at the
same time, but I don't like the idea of buying something made by
faceless people in some undisclosed village in China who probably won't
see a penny of my money. At least I know where Taiwan is.
Have fun.