I bought a new smart charger!

Nasphere · Post by **Nasphere** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 3:13 pm

After dealing with the BS of frying cells on my 1A minimum peak charger, I decided to browse around a little and came accross this lil guy last friday..

It starts with a 250mAh charge or an optional 250mAh discharge that will automatically switch to charge, and every slot works independently from the others! That means it peak charges 10 mixed AA, AAA, NiMh, and NiCd in any order at the SAME TIME!

It's still charging 8 2650mAh AAs, a 1000mAh AAA, and it's reconditioning a 700mAh NiCd AA (3rd cycle so far)...

I'll post again if it screws up or something, but so far I'm pretty impressed with it's performance.

SuperFly · Post by **SuperFly** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 3:33 pm

Where'd you get it and how much? What kind of charging times are you getting for the AA and AAAs you mentioned?

edit: nm, I didn't realize the picture was a link.

Nasphere · Post by **Nasphere** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 3:42 pm

SuperFly wrote:Where'd you get it and how much? What kind of charging times are you getting for the AA and AAAs you mentioned?

edit: nm, I didn't realize the picture was a link.

Well I just got the charger around noon yesterday so I've not really had enough time to test it thoroughly..

I was just reading about charging batteries safely here:
http://www.mpoweruk.com/chargers.htm

Seems the "negative delta V" and trickle methods are unsafe for NiMh because it could catch the peak too late. I remember Duracell released a charger that senses the delta temp to cut charging, which is safer for the cells according to this site.

Nasphere · Post by **Nasphere** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 4:38 pm

Apparently all the newer batteries I have were never "peaked" so they're taking twice as long to charge as the reference card says. lol, it had me worried there thinking my expensive cells were frying on this POS charger, but they were just peaking for the first time! The charger works GREAT!

It's charged:
8 2650mAh AAs (new, never used)
4 1000mAh AAAs (also new)

Revived:
5 2200mAh AAs (sitting dead 4 years, stopped holding a charge)
A 500mAh AA NiCd (~20 years old)
A 650mAh AA NiCd (15+ years old)
And a 700mAh AA NiCd (~10 years old)

Currently working on:
8 more 2650mAh AAs (new)
2 more dead 2200mAh AAs..

I think for $30 shipped it's a pretty good deal, and at 250mAh your cells should last forever.
For ~$60 shipped you can get the charger plus 20 2500mAh AAs! ($1.25 per cell)