abufletcher

Those of you who know me also know that I'm severely "battery challenged." Once again I find myself completely unable to make heads or tails of what my charger is telling me when attempting to charge a 1S 3.7V 6000mAh LiPo pack. I plug the darn think in, then it goes through the usual "battery check" display, then tells me that there is no balancer (which is ok since there's only one cell in a 1S pack) and then proceeds to....

...well that's just it. I can't tell what it's doing but roughly 2-3 minutes after starting to charge, the charger beeps and then displays "END" but the mAh displayed is all wrong. The sequence of photos below show what I'm seeing.

(Please, please, please let's not have this mean that the battery is now "dead." It's just the same with my other 5000mAh battery. Argh!)

Teus

Maybe your battery is stil full?

foodstick

Abu I am not the biggest expert on battery chargers, and I have never used the one you have . However it appears that battery was almost fully charged when you started...

If you have lost your manual I think you can find one online...


The third picture bottom right shows 4.18 volt and one cell fully charged is 4.20 when its done.

The one thing that I worry about is in pic one the top right number is 6.0 A . I believe that is showing how hard you are putting a charge in the battery. You appear to be slamming it in there.. My old smaller chargers only go up to 2 A (amps) I think. And I have cheaper batteries than most people today so I charge much slower
(easier on cheap batteries)

So it appears you are starting with a nearly full pack and then SLAMMING a charge in there and that why it is shutting off so fast. I don't know what you are powering with your battery but a lipo can last MUCH longer than nicads depending on the use. For example I have an rc radio that would need charged daily before I switched it to lipo's. Now it might go three weeks or so on a charge. Depending on use and if I leave it on for an hour on accident !


Picture one shows 6000, on the bottom left.. that is telling you that a 6.000 sized lipo is plugged in.. look at your battery that 6.0 means 6000 milliamp. The 1s on the bottom right is telling you its plugged into a 1 cell pack.

I think that when you first plug in your charger you get a flashing battery type..anything flashing means that is what you are going to change when you push the battery type button. Once you hit select it will SELECT what is flashing and should start something else flashing on the face of the charger.. then you can rotate thru the option with the battery button.. once you have what you desire you hit select again. I would try to get the 6.0A flashing and then hit the down arrows to lower the number 6.0A to 3.0A. That will make it charge slower. But easier on battery.

Once again your equipment is probably newer than mine so I maybe overly cautious. Just always try to charge outdoors, or with that battery in a SAFE place..

foodstick

Hopefully someone will be in here to explain it better / right

Steve Percifield

My Feedback: (14)

Every one is right. It's a 6000 mah battery, so a 1c charge rate is 6 amps. The charger reads the battery, sees it is almost charged and drops the charge rate to almost zero and puts in 299 mah before stopping. Meaning, the battery was almost fully charged when you put it on the charger. The charger only replaces what the battery needs . If, the charger wasn't a "smart charger", you would have blown up the battery.

Rafael23cc

My Feedback: (6)

I have no experience with that specific charger, but I believe you are reading the screen wrong.

The Charger is set at 6a for a 1S battery. That is correct. the total mah put into the battery is 31 the number on the top right. The number on the bottom left is the charge amperage at that moment of the charge cycle. that is why you see it go up to charge, and then back down towards the end of the cycle. If the battery was drained, you would see this number go up to your setting of 6a and stay there for a while.

And then of course, you have the voltage on the bottom right, and the obvious time and other parameters in the screen.

I agree, the battery was almost fully charged already.

Rafael

philakapd

Put the battery under load/cycle. Use a wattmeter during use to verify the mAh consumed.

After using the battery and determining the amount of mAh's used, verify your charger puts the same amount back into the battery during the next charge.

I agree with Rafael23cc, it appears the battery is almost to full capacity prior to you connecting it to the charger.

Good luck.

abufletcher

Thanks for all of the replies, which seem to all agree that the battery was almost fully charged. That's good news because that's what I would have expected since I haven't used it at all since I last charged it. But then it had been some time since the last charge. (BTW, I have the "manual" for the charger but like a lot of the instructions for electronic devices it's not very instructive.)

This battery will be used to power the Microsens GLOW7 LP + GLOW BALANCER controlled on-board glow system. But I'm having problems with it now that it's in the model. It worked fine (once I got it figured out) on the test stand but not now. I went back to "square one" which is to "re-program" the system by removing a small jumper on the GLOW7 LP and also remove one of the glow plugs to visually inspect the current level. When satisfied with the glow intensity at a given throttle position, you put the jumper back on. But there are two (possibly related) problems. First, the LED indicator light doesn't do exactly what the instructions say it should be doing. And second, there's no glow at all on the plug at any throttle position.

So I wanted to confirm that the LiPo was in fact charged to eliminate that as a possible source of the problem.

*****

I want to add that in my opinion the battery charger would be a lot "smarter" if it told me directly how many mAh are actually stored.

OliverJacob

My Feedback: (12)

The charger does not know how much capacity the battery holds without discharging it.
After being fully charged, you had to discharge it to find out.
Charging with 6 Amps should not hurt the battery, Lipos normally can be charged with 2c or more. So even 12 Amps would be ok.
Thanks for the explanation, I was curious what a plane a 1S with 6Ah could be used for :-)

abufletcher

The glow system runs a Seidel UMS 770 radial installed on a Modelcraft Paulistinha P-56 ARF.

Regarding discharging LiPos, the instructions say that LiPos should never be fully discharged but neither should they be stored fully charged either. Instead, the charger instructions advise using the "store" function which, if I understand that correctly, drops the capacity down to about 60%.

OliverJacob

My Feedback: (12)

Agree, you should never fully discharge any rechargeable battery.
Most chargers have a discharge or cycle function, they will only discharge to a certain level, so the battery does not get damaged.
I don't know if your charger has that function, if not, I'd recommend buying one.
If you are not sure if a battery is still holding enough capacity, this is the safe way to find out.

NiCd batteries last longer if they are being cycled, they have a 'memory effect' , if they are only partially being charged and used (like we do in TX and RX) then they will loose the unused capacity.
That is probably why newer charger still have this function, all though Lipos, LiFes or even NiMh batteries do not need to be cycled.

Rafael23cc

My Feedback: (6)

It did, the number of mah put into the battery during the cycle in the pictures is 31; the number on the upper right. As stated before, there is no way for a charger to know the total capacity of the pack. The "smart" feature comes when the charger "senses" the voltage of the battery and ramps up the amperage at the beginning of the cycle, and ramps it down at the end of the cycle.

If the battery is fully charged, and you want to keep the battery for a long time, you use 80% of the capacity, in your case 4800 mah. It will take a few tries to get a time limit that will draw down 80% of the total capacity.

Rafael

abufletcher

I just wonder why not. I mean both my camcorder and DSLR provide a graphic indication of how much battery power is left. And can you imagine a gas gauge on a car that only displays how much gas you pumped in but not how much is actually in the tank? (On the other hand, I suppose the gas station pump doesn't know how much is in the tank, just when to stop pumping.) Anyway, I suppose I can live with this now that I at least know what the numbers on the charger display are indicating.

The charger instructions state: "ALWAYS store your packs 55-65% of capacity. After a day of flying use STORE mode to achieve this. It is especially harmful to store lithium packs fully charged, and should be avoided for more than a week at most."

OliverJacob

My Feedback: (12)

Your build in indicators read the battery voltage. It does not show the remaining capacity in mAh.

The gas gauge is calibrated to the size of your gas tank and simply measures the fluid level.
So you are asking the gas pump (charger) how much gas is in your tank, it does not know that. It knows when the tank is full and how much gas it hat pumped in.

There is simply no way in knowing the capacity without cycling the battery. You could calculate the charge by measuring the voltage and knowing the capacity and it's discharge voltage curve. With Lipos or Lifes this curve is rather flat and won't allow an accurate prediction.

You can install a mAh meter between your battery and glow driver, it'll show how much charge had been used. But then again - you have to know the actual capacity of that battery to know how much life is left.

Rafael23cc

My Feedback: (6)

the gas tank on your car only takes a specific amount of fuel and the DSLR camera only takes a specific battery. The analogy of the gas pump is perfect.

you are confusing terms here. Storing and using is two different stories. For a lithium battery to last for many years (charge-discharge cycles) it needs to be used up to 80% of it's capacity. In your case, since you are not powering up a motor or similar device, it may not be a problem. But at any single use of the battery, the mah put into the battery after a charge cannot be more than 80% of the capacity. in your case, you cannot see more than 4800 in the upper right corner of your charger. If you do, you abused the battery and it will start degrading quickly. Storing.... well you already know that part.

Rafael

abufletcher

Thanks for the clarification. It will be interesting to see how much battery power will be used as the glow-system turns on and off...especially as I expect to be flying most of the time at least than 1/2 throttle.

foodstick

You may be able to fly several different days without a need to recharge...

abufletcher

What I mean is that the glow comes on anywhere below half throttle so in all likelihood it would be on for 80% of my flying. Actually, I'd prefer it to come on at around 1/4 throttle but don't see any way to set that on the GLOW7 LP.

foodstick

You know , I have been watching tons of videos on Foreigners living in Japan the last few days.... hahahahah

I don't know why I find it so interesting.. but it is..

Hopefully , you have that battery figured out now ! Maybe you can find a Gaigin Hunter with battery charging skills hope I spelled that right.

abufletcher

Yeah, I think I finally get it. The radio/electronics on this model are by far the most complicated I've ever installed. You gotta love the learning curve!

(Very few "gaijin hunters" of the female variety around here...and even fewer with technical RC skills. However, I can recall a couple of instances of being "gaijin hunted" as when my wife and I were invited by an elegant middle-aged couple to an elaborately prepared Japanese dinner. It really was special. Afterwards, we retired to the living room and chatted about this and that and then took photos together. Next they showed us a photo album with a collection of their many other "foreign friends" and we couldn't help but imagined that we were soon to join the "trophies" to be shown at the next dinner for the next gaijin.")

chuckk2

I'd first measure the battery voltage. I don't have your charger, so I don't know if it has a monitor function.
A battery checker or one of the pocket DVMs should suffice.
Remember
~3.2v per cell is basically discharged ~20% of charge left
~3.8v about 50% charged From this point with a 6Ah battery, you would expect to put about 3Ah in to fully charge
~4.2v fully charged. Note: a drop to about 4.18v after charging, and a rest is fairly typical.
A new 6Ah battery should have about ~4.8Ah available for use.
Always store at about 50% of charge, ~3.85v or so

The last time I was in Japan was in 1968

abufletcher

That's a very useful way of looking at it. Thanks.

CK1

My Feedback: (60)

abufletcher.
It looks like you are using a Hyperion charger. I ran into the same problem with my hyperion charger, although it is a different model. Hyperions normally read cell voltage from the balancer and if the cell balance is not used it may charge incorrectly or display error. Hyperion always recommend using the balancer regardless of cell count. I had no balance tabs on my battery so I made up a jumper set to connect to the balancer from the battery wires . Allowing connection to both the main leads and the balancer cured the problem for me .

abufletcher

I've never used the balancer boards that came with the Hyperion charger. They seem set up for some completely other type of plug connection, that I'm not at all interested in. My hardcase LiPo only has connections for banana-plugs and the GLOW7 LP also has banana plugs.

TFF

LiPos are stored at 1/2 charge( whatever manufacturer recommends) because a shorted fully charged pack will burn your house down. A 5 amp pack has a bunch of juice to get the lithium burning; then you are SOL.