Battery Warranties

Ah, some guys don't have their priorities in the right order. Batteries are far more important.

. Christ>>

Versatile, is good. I've found that during power cuts, storms, etc, the battery needs change quite a bit. Call ID box is less important, and pocket mini mag much more so.

The electrical section of Walmart has "closet lights" fluorescent and battery power. About ten bucks. I bought one that runs on four D cells, and screws to the wall. It sits over my light switch in my bedroom, for the moments when the power is out. Weight and size, less of an issue. But, longer run time and good light output is nice.

. Christ>

I've tried exactly that, a set of D shells that hold AA cells. It works but the run time is remarkably less. That figures since an AA is something like 2 Ahr while an alkaline D cell is ten times that or more.

The second consideration is that anything old enough to be designed for D cells very likely counts on the higher per cell voltage of alkalines. Some of the things I've tried it in, the low battery indicator comes on with fully charged cells, just inserted.

I'm very impressed with enloops and I've been systematically retiring my cells that are approaching end of life and buying only Enloops.

That's a brand name, Sanyo. At least on other company is now marketing something they claim is the same. Haven't tired them personally.

Enloops ARE NiMH, just a better version. The precharged is sort of a marketing gimmick and only possible because they loose so little charge in storage.

Sanyo likes to sell you thier charger, but their website admits any NiMH charger is just fine.

You have already run that thread a dozen times in a.s.

About five, but yes, valid point.

It ought to be possible to put 4x AAs in place of a D cell but there don't seem to be any commercially available adapters to do this, and I've had other things to do than to try to make my own (although, really, it should be fairly easy with some pieces of hardwood dowel, a drill press, some sheet brass, random bits of hardware, and a little ingenuity.)

I've even heard that only conductive spacers are needed to make this work in a Mag-Lite, but haven't tried it other than to confirm that yes, the cells will fit in the tube.

Always a risk... funny thing is the only thing that ever happened to me on was a Nikon digital camera, which theoretically was able to use NiMH batteries. (theory and practice sometimes differ, obviously.)

I don't think that low self discharge is a gimmick at all, it makes rechargeables practical for lots of uses for which they previously weren't, namely rarely-used flashlights, remote controls, and rarely-used tools, which make up the vast majority of battery powered devices in my house.

The best are supposedly the Maha C9000 or the LaCrosse BC-whatever the latest version is. I have the C9000 and am happy with it. Much more so than the old Energizer brand charger that I bought packaged with some NiMHs in a store ages ago which turned me off of rechargeables for a good few years.

As always, rechargeable batteries and the associated chargers vary in quality and the current "top of the heap" seems to change regularly, with the exception of Eneloops which always seem to be at or near the top of the ratings. So when reading reviews of a product be cognizant of the date. I can think of at least one NiMH battery brand (but can't remember what it is now though) that was highly regarded a few years ago, apparently underwent a revision, and the new version was emphatically not recommended. Other than personal experience, I check out candlepowerforums every now and then whenever I need something battery or charger related.

nate

I stand corrected. I was thinking of 10 Ahr and wrote 10X.

I thought of this too. Even went though the exercise of drawing the geometry to confirm. I too looked and found nothing commercially. The only thing I can think of against it is whether the parallel cells will share.

With some sort of insulation around the outside to keep it from touching the metal case. Granted the case is anodized and some anodizing is an insulator but movement and vibration could wear though that.

The low self discharge is very real. I've many of them and they live up to their claim. What I said was being pre-charged is nice but mostly a gimmick since it only saves you one charging out of hundreds in its lifetime.

I've seen lots of products go from top to bottom and sometimes back to top. I know from my work in production, problems come and go. An undocumented change at a component/material vendor, a process change made by people that thought they were helping but didn't understand a complex process, etc. I also suppose management vacillates between cashing in on reputation vs improvement when they find their sales in the dumper.

If you're using Eneloops, and only use cells from one package, they seem to be "tight" enough that this shouldn't be a problem, although that's a good thing to think about.

Apparently, in Japan, they sell Eneloop branded C and D cells and instead of them being purpose built single cells, they are smaller cells ganged together, which is in essence exactly what we're talking about doing here.

So even Sanyo (well, Panasonic now) is confident enough in the uniformity of their cells that they feel comfortable doing this.

The drawback, of course, is that a "D cell" Eneloop is only 6000 mAh, using only three cells. I suspect that four is technically outside the size spec for a D cell but will probably work in most devices. Haven't bothered to look up the pertinent specs for both to verify. Three is easily doable, but there doesn't seem to even be a good 3xAA to D cell adapter readily available. This guy:

will work, but is awful expensive and according to the guys over on candlepowerforums doesn't have enough metal in it for high current apps. Of course, these are the same guys that think something like the DEFT-X is awesome. (google for it) Well, it is, but they're actually

Right, but then again it's been a habit of mine for ages to put a piece of cardboard from a cereal box or whatever in the body of every flashlight I have to keep the cells from rattling, so that is an easy inexpensive solution.

One ingenious thought that I heard was to do that, then pick a wood dowel that would fit in the dead space between two cells, then use that to line all the cells up. So if you did that then you would really only need two spacers, and one of them could be e.g. a half dollar or something like that. The positive end would be the only one where you'd have to get creative.

Only D-cell mag I have is a four cell light though, so that's $40 worth of Eneloops, or I'd probably need to gather up every single one around the house to fill that light. I pretty much keep it out of nostalgia, as the little single AA Fenix that is in my pocket right now is a better flashlight, never mind the Surefire 6P with Malkoff drop-in or Fenix TK41 that I also have. I do open it up every now and then to make sure that the alkaleaks aren't doing what they do best... I'm trying to think of another D-cell powered device that I have and can't think of one.

nate

I think it's a fun idea. However, by the time you finished such a project, it's just easier to go buy 2 AA shells, and change the batteries more often. Or go buy more D cells before the world ends.

I had a pack of 8 D cells, Duracell, best before 1999. I noticed a couple leaked, so I finally opened the package. None were worth keeping. I guess four were not leaking, one of those was dead. Two were weak. one, seemed OK. But, I pitched em all. I guess they did the job, got me through Y2K. Anyone remember Y2K?

. Christ>

I've never drunk a beer or had so much as a glass of wine in my life and I had an arrogant, condescending, insulting doctor ask he how much I drank. He assumed I drank alcohol because I was in the county hospital. My roommate, that they killed, drank alcohol by the gallon, took illegal drugs and couldn't get it through his addled brain that they were going to test his blood and urine when he was in the hospital. He complained that the doctors wouldn't prescribe any pain medication for him and I couldn't get him to understand it was because any pain medication would cause a very bad reaction when mixed with alcohol. Heck, it's a long story and I get very angry when I retell it. o_O

TDD

Y'all 2 Kooky? o_O

TDD

I predicted about a week of random problems. I was a bit disappointed when nothing seemed to go wrong. Someone told me Lowe's had a lot of trouble with their computers. Planes falling out of the sky was absurd, they don't need to subtract year dates to fly.

. Christ>> one, seemed OK. But, I pitched em all. I guess they did the job, got me

I had to replace the BIOS chips and add bios boards to correct the BIOS in some older computers so 21'st century dates worked in the old boxes but a lot of imbedded digital control systems couldn't be modified but they never stopped working an to the great disappointment Y2K doomsayers, none of the old digital equipment exploded at midnight. ^_^

TDD

"None" is an overstatement. There wasn't much but there was some. We spent a lot of time where I worked testing stuff and upgrading as necessary. MS put out patches on DOS. It would have been a bit more of a problem if the "alarmists" hadn't blackmailed the "nay sayers" into taking the problem seriously before hand.

At the personal level, the promise of no computers anymore, I was bitterly disappointed. ;>}

Dang! I wanted lots of stuff exploding to add to the fireworks at midnight. o_O

TDD

Sew some wire mesh into your shirt, and then loudly demand to be defibrillated?

I fashioned some 60/40 solder between masking tape, and made a white image of "OUT TO LUNCH" in one of my chest Xrays. Got the idea when a friend of my Dad did the same thing with chewing gum wrappers. Or, so I'm told.

. Christ>

We would have had a few cosmetic problems but nothing drastic. Probably the greatest inconvenience was to our clients. Most were running AIX on RS6000 boxes that were too old to run the distro IBM patched.

The Unix time thing will have a lot more impact but I don't plan to be coding when the industry gets around to panicking for that one. IPv6 is also getting off the ground with all the grace of a herniated turkey.

We had people at work j.i.c and I was on call. When the band played Auld Lang Syne at the First Night finale and the lights didn't go out, I figured I could go home and go to bed.

Heck, you was workin on dat big ol stuff, I were fixin cumputers fo all dem po folks. ^_^

TDD

It was done in about 1978 or so, I doubt the hospital still has it available.

. Christ> PLEASE share THAT XRay!!!