Back when I was in college I had a guy living in our dorm that was working on state of the art batteries. He was very enthousiastic about them, but I didn't really understand why. Sure it would be neat to have a bit more juice in my batteries. It would save me from recharging my phone every day. But there is a law on batteries and power that is similar to moore's 'law' on the number of transistors for cpu's; The more capacity something has, the more it will be used. The increase in usage offsets the increase in capacity.
Now, years later, I find myself still using AA batteries. And some AAA too, for things like remote controls. Environmentally conscious as I am I use rechargeable batteries. I've never really given it much thought. I bought a charger a while ago with some batteries and used them. Then I bought some more rechargeable batteries because I ran short on AA's. And somehow after a couple of months they didn't seem to work that well anymore. After charging the batteries they would only work for a short period of time. I assumed it was the charger so I bought a better one with better batteries. This went on for a while until I had 3 chargers and 20 batteries and a lot of frustration. What battery did I charge again? Which one is the new one? Is this battery fully charged? Bah, let me charge it again. and then waiting over 12 hours for a battery to charge that has a text on the side of it saying it charges in 7 hours.
So I started to do some research. It turns out I had 2 different types of chargers. One for NiCd batteries. And two for NiMH and NiMH/NiCd. Trying to charge the NiMH batteries in the NiCd didn't work that well apparantly. There also was no information on the chargers about their charge rate. Or why one charger would flag certain batteries as bad, while the other chargers would not.
I needed something better. I needed something that would test my batteries for proper functioning and would charge them properly.
I have found such a device. It's called the voltcraft ipc-1. The ipc-1 does it all:
It handles NiCd and NiMH.
Bad battery detection is automatic
It can charge faster than any charger I've ever had (1800mA/h!), although you probably don't want to (see below).
It can re-condition, aka refresh, batteries.
Wait... it can 'refresh' batteries? Well apparently batteries lose their mojo after either time or repeated usage. By discharging and charging them a number of times the battery gets back some of its mojo and is able to continue its work for you for a while longer, before you need to replace it. That's great! I never knew that. That was never mentioned on any of the batteries I bought. Doing this manually is a boring task. You need to keep count, and it takes for ever. The ipc does it by itself. Just give it 1-4 batteries, tell it to refresh and it will tell you when it's done. Horay for ease of use :)
Reading more about batteries and charging I found out that the faster you charge a battery the quicker it will wear down. This is very much dependent on the battery quality. Better brands allow for faster charging with less (or perhaps no) wear. So even though the ipc can charge at 1800mAh you probably shouldn't.
I hope this was somewhat informational.
As a parting thought: why are non-rechargeable batteries still being sold? The EU ruled that incandescent light bulbs can no longer be sold because there are many good alternatives these days. Why not do the same for batteries? This is a huge strain on the environment. Many people throw them in the trash instead of recycling them. It's a waste of your money too.....
Now, years later, I find myself still using AA batteries. And some AAA too, for things like remote controls. Environmentally conscious as I am I use rechargeable batteries. I've never really given it much thought. I bought a charger a while ago with some batteries and used them. Then I bought some more rechargeable batteries because I ran short on AA's. And somehow after a couple of months they didn't seem to work that well anymore. After charging the batteries they would only work for a short period of time. I assumed it was the charger so I bought a better one with better batteries. This went on for a while until I had 3 chargers and 20 batteries and a lot of frustration. What battery did I charge again? Which one is the new one? Is this battery fully charged? Bah, let me charge it again. and then waiting over 12 hours for a battery to charge that has a text on the side of it saying it charges in 7 hours.
So I started to do some research. It turns out I had 2 different types of chargers. One for NiCd batteries. And two for NiMH and NiMH/NiCd. Trying to charge the NiMH batteries in the NiCd didn't work that well apparantly. There also was no information on the chargers about their charge rate. Or why one charger would flag certain batteries as bad, while the other chargers would not.
I needed something better. I needed something that would test my batteries for proper functioning and would charge them properly.
I have found such a device. It's called the voltcraft ipc-1. The ipc-1 does it all:
It handles NiCd and NiMH.
Bad battery detection is automatic
It can charge faster than any charger I've ever had (1800mA/h!), although you probably don't want to (see below).
It can re-condition, aka refresh, batteries.
Wait... it can 'refresh' batteries? Well apparently batteries lose their mojo after either time or repeated usage. By discharging and charging them a number of times the battery gets back some of its mojo and is able to continue its work for you for a while longer, before you need to replace it. That's great! I never knew that. That was never mentioned on any of the batteries I bought. Doing this manually is a boring task. You need to keep count, and it takes for ever. The ipc does it by itself. Just give it 1-4 batteries, tell it to refresh and it will tell you when it's done. Horay for ease of use :)
Reading more about batteries and charging I found out that the faster you charge a battery the quicker it will wear down. This is very much dependent on the battery quality. Better brands allow for faster charging with less (or perhaps no) wear. So even though the ipc can charge at 1800mAh you probably shouldn't.
I hope this was somewhat informational.
As a parting thought: why are non-rechargeable batteries still being sold? The EU ruled that incandescent light bulbs can no longer be sold because there are many good alternatives these days. Why not do the same for batteries? This is a huge strain on the environment. Many people throw them in the trash instead of recycling them. It's a waste of your money too.....
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