Hi;
Can someone recommend me a good universal battery charger, something for charging Gel Cell Batteries and maybe NiMh?
I have an old Robbe Lader 5 8310 which is in great condition but I do't have any instructions for it. It also seems to be outputting 30v whereas it states on it and I'm sure it used to measure. 12v?
Universal charger
I use the iMAX B6 universal charger. Not only will it charge NiCD / NiMh, Li-polymer / Li-ion, and lead acid, (gell cell), it will also do an evaluation and balance charge. It is compact, fully programmable, has an LCD display, and handles any battery from 2-20V.
I got mine off Ebay a few months ago and I think it was around $15. Very happy with it.
Universal charger
Very good value: https://www.robotshop.com/en/x1-touch-55-watt-ac-dc-battery-charger.html
Sorry for being a bit dumb
Sorry for being a bit dumb but I have just realised I bought an iMax Balance Charger (I even think it’s the B6). I bought this when I bought a couple of LiPo batteries but thought it could only recharge LiPos?
DOH!
Robot Life on Ni-MH Batteries
My RPi3 robot is powered by six 5000mAH Ni-MH C-cells, and a Tenergy 1025 Universal Smart Charger (for 6-12v NiMH packs).
Last weekend, when I plugged my bot in to recharge, the charger blinked “bad battery” condition. Two of the (year old) Tenergy C-cells were at 0 volts, while the other four cells read 1.1 volts.
I had some three year old EBL C-cells, never used, that showed about 0.8 volts, so I swapped two of them in for the bad cells.
After fully charging, my “safely find not-going-anywhere battery life” program reported only 6 hours of safe run time (shuts down at 4 readings under 6.5v, leaving about 10 minutes of no motors, no servos computing). I thought I might be needing $25 in new cells.
The second cycle reported a whopping 12.5 hours, even better than the 10 hours of the original six cells.
My robot and I are happy again.
