Found an old Archos Vision 35 portable media player thing that was last used in 2012ish. Obviously the battery was flat as flat and plugging it in expecting it to charge was a fantasy. Sure enough plugged it in and it registered as fully charged and switching off as empty when unplugged. (mini USB charging)
The battery isn't replaceable so with nothing to loose I left it "on charge" for the last 3 weeks being too attached to it to throw it away.
Unplugged it yesterday and it stayed alive and holding charge. It's still showing full charge today and fully operational.
The battery hadn't had a hard life in the past, very few charge cycles so rather chuffed it's come back from the dead to live another life.
It's possible any RC modellers here do or anyone dealing with rechargables in any way.
The main one I have is an iCharger 1010B+ and I initially bought it to be able to (computer) log the characteristics (charge and discharge) of a multi-cell LiIon eCycle battery.
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Basically you hook up the main +Ve and 0V leads and a 'balance' cable that picks off the 'taps' of all the cells between the main terminals.
So if you had a 4S (4 'cell') LiPo battery you would expect to see 4 x
4.2V charged (so 16.8V), so the charger would 'see' the 4.2, 8.4, 12.6 and the main +ve terminal at 16.8V.
When charging (or discharging), the charger should be able to 'balance' the voltage across each cell individually to ensure none become over charged (or over discharged).
A real clever trick is that it can charge a 36V battery from a 12V supply and discharge one battery into another (regenerative charging).
Lead Acid, Nicad, NiMh and Lithium batteries are covered and you can log all the activity on a PC via a USB cable.
It really is a clever bit of kit (not cheap mind).
Well, yes, but nothing beyond your skill set Mr Lamb. ;-)
Yes and no (and easier than some other more touchy chemistries).
One of the reasons that Nicads in particular so weird is from lack of decent (as in Depth Of Discharge) use. So, being as portable tool battery packs were generally seen as a single series string of cells, it's often quite easy to access each end of that string with (first say) a multimeter (DC volts) to both find the ends of the battery on the connector and the polarity. Then, you would make some form of connection between the pack connectors (crock clip, strip of bean can tin etc) and set the charger to 'Nicad' and the numbers of cells (generally the marked voltage (divided by 1.2). If the cells aren't in too bad a state it can often detect the actual number of cells / voltage automatically.
Then if it's marked as say a 2A pack, you might set the charge current to the 1/10th or 1/20th of the capacity (so .2 or .4A) and the discharge current at say 1A, set it to cycle, 10 x Discharge / Charge cycles and press 'Go'.
It will then discharge the set at A1 down to say 1V / cell and then charge it up at say 100mA till the full charge is detected. You can also stick a temperature sensor onto one of the cells and that will them compensate if it measure a high temperature. You can also set a delay time between states to allow the battery to cool down between cycles (say 10 mins).
When it's finished the last charge it will display the capacity of that last cycle, and then you can judge if the battery has improved and / or of a useable capacity or not.
If you are interested in recording the whole process for later review ... you just plug it in your PC (supplied USB cable), install Logview (or similar, free):
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... and save the finished data to be able to scroll though the whole lot in whatever detail you like. The sort of thing you would be able to see then is if the capacity improved or not and at what number of cycles it happened (assuming it did).
So, once you know the machine (10 mins) and know what you are looking at chemistry wise (NiCad or NiMn etc), it can be pretty automatic or at worst, require the minimum of user input.
That charger is one of those things I would go straight out and buy another, should it go wrong (out of warranty etc). [1]. ;-)
Cheers, T i m
[1] The others being my 'Ansmann Energy 16' charger (for std AAA, AA, C, D and PP9 Nicad and NiMh'), my Optimate 4 (for 12V Lead acid batteries) and hopefully my new 'Nitecore Digicharger D4EU', mainly for LiIon ex laptop 18650 cells (and other types etc). ;-)
p.s. If you want me to pickup any power tool packs and test / cycle them for you when I'm passing next I'm quite happy to, if only for the S&G's etc?
Current state of play is both battery sets pretty much flat after a few days without use. Re-charge makes them useable for my normal jobs but still well short of their original performance.
About £140 quid, but, you will also need a power supply of some sort (a laptop type powerpack or a bigish 12V battery etc).
Which is pretty expensive if you only want one to try to resolve a specific situation.
Depending on how important it was to you or how interested you are in it all (other than just using the tools etc) then you could also (other than just cycling the pack to exercise them etc) open the pack up and see if it's just one bad cell (as they are all in series). eg. If you put a voltmeter across them and it read say 'around 12v' but when you put it in the drill and pulled the trigger, nothing / little happens, that might point to at least one cell having high resistance.
The charger has a 'forming' mode which plays with the charging current to help low cells equalise.
Well, that could be general wear_and_tear on the pack as a whole (so little that could be done for them), one (or more) cells going high resistance between uses and limiting the current from the pack (repeated cycling of the pack *might* help that) or you may just need to replace the one (or more) bad cells.
It's quite easy to locate the bad cells as with the pack open you measure the voltage across each cell off load (that may be sufficient to tell you) and then with a load (12v lamp or somesuch) and find the cell with the low or even reverse voltage on it. A good cell can be bought new or taken from another dead pack they may have the same issues (eg, one or more dead cells).
However, none of this is really the 'answer to a maidens prayer' but if you are interested in such things it can be one of them. ;-)
We'll have to send our batteries to you for reconditioning on that ?150 machine!
I have that Nitecore D4 for 18650s and it's not as great as its fans seem to say. Charging seems to be okay but the battery (cell) holders are flimsy and the display is overcomplicated with the requisite button pressing. Also its total charge rate per cell is reduced if all four stations are used and while this isn't completely unusual I didn't expect it on a charger of this class.
Hmm, I've only run mine for the first time tonight (D4 EU in case that makes any difference) and it's just seemed to resurrect 8 x 18650's (recovered from an old laptop battery pack) ok (as in they charged up and cut off and a discharge test of a couple on the 1010B+ (3.6 down to 3V) showed them at 1100 and 1400mAh. I'm keeping a log of each cell and see how / if they pickup and the self discharge levels etc.
Ok. I've always been a fan of 'slow and gentle' charging as it generally prevents the batteries from overheating and so they seem to threshold better and last longer so am automatically reduced charging current is fine by me.
I was also looking at the 'Opus BT - C3100' 4 chan charger and discharger as I've had one of the similar chargers for AAA and AA (Nicad / NiMh cells) and it's nice to put an old / iffy cell in and have it cycle it (them) till it (they) no longer improve their capacity. At least that way you can get a reasonable idea if it's worth keeping or not.
I've ordered 10 wirable 18650 trays so I can make up a jig for the
1010B+ so I can balance-cycle 10 x 18650's at once. I was thinking of putting them all in a metal mini shed or dustbin in the garden so I can leave them running unattended. ;-)
Or maybe a brazier (with a rain shield over the top chimney) or oil drum type BBQ so the air can circulate but keep the rain out (and fire in, should the worst happen). ;-(
Hmm.. I have the old XP (free to good home) taking up space behind me but I'll probably struggle on. Perhaps look for an impact driver as that is what the trade seem to use.
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