Absolute Power! - Well, not quite.
[make sure to read the edit at the bottom of this post]
I had a battery charger just die on me a week or two back, and needed a new one in a bit of a hurry to keep a digital camera in working order. It was an Energiser and wasn't of any great age, so I was surely not going to buy one of theirs this time around.
OK Hama has had a fair reputation down the years, and I felt £18.00 for that and 4 x 2500mAh AA cells was not too bad a deal really. The 2500 mAh would be welcome since I've been getting by on some 1200 and 1500 cells for a while.
The unit is a Duo 2/4 and was somewhat over packaged, requiring metal cutting shears to gain access to the goods. Having got into the contents I set about reading the instructions, which it must be said could stand a little work as they are not what I'd class as quite adequate (poor translationn seemingly is the greatest problem).
Anyway, I managed to work out the charging rate situation it was trying to explain. It all got a bit easier once I knocked up a spreadsheet to figure out the maths - thank heaven maths does not take a lot to translate - I suspect I'd have been fully lost otherwise.
Sadly what the maths also revealed is that the charger is not actually capable of fully charging the cells included in the pack! They would require something over 14 hours to become fully charged according to the maths on the package, the charger is unhelpfully designed to automatically switch off after 13.5 hours, as a safety feature according to the blurb! You could indeed unplug it and top up the shortfall I must suppose, but of course that would completely defeat the touted safety feature, allowing a significantly greater than 10 hours overcharge to take place in unfortunate circumstances. This really would be quite a dangerous situation potentially, especially when mixed with the poor translation of the instructions and the assumption that the maths is not beyond a purchaser, which can not be ruled out, given a reasonable amount of thought, say, 2 seconds worth of thought at most.
It's interesting that this got out of the front door of the manufacturer as it seems to be a fully silly situation to me. I mean, the bottom line is that here we have a product which is not entirely compatible with itself, and could quite possibly lead to a dangerous situation. I'd speculate this package has been uprated with greater capacity cells to prolong the shelf life of the product cheaply; with 2000 mAh, 2100 mAh, 2200 mAh or even 2300 mAh cells it would quite probably have been absolutely fine and it's safety would probably be beyond question right now.
[edit]
In the last 24 hours I've started on doing an awful lot more research into charging and using NiMH cells. I'd estimate that I may have a month or two of rather dry reading ahead. However I'd like to stress that the research I've done so far indicates that the problems and concerns I've voiced here should be seen in perspective; that prespective suggests that the situation I've outlined here is quite possibly a lot less dangerous than some other methods this maker could have opted for, and which sadly some other makers HAVE opted for.
While the hama unit does have those potential issues, they are almost like nothing compared to the issues other makers are bringing to the table for consideration by some fairly suspect methods which they are employing.
To remain safe I'd say that the best thing to do is for now accept the undercharging situation, and as time passes maybe look into obtaining a very gentle trickle charger to "top off" batteries charged in this way, so that full capacity can be enjoyed. It's a bit of a rigamarole frankly, but does appear to be the only sensible route to go, oddly.
[/edit]
I had a battery charger just die on me a week or two back, and needed a new one in a bit of a hurry to keep a digital camera in working order. It was an Energiser and wasn't of any great age, so I was surely not going to buy one of theirs this time around.
OK Hama has had a fair reputation down the years, and I felt £18.00 for that and 4 x 2500mAh AA cells was not too bad a deal really. The 2500 mAh would be welcome since I've been getting by on some 1200 and 1500 cells for a while.
The unit is a Duo 2/4 and was somewhat over packaged, requiring metal cutting shears to gain access to the goods. Having got into the contents I set about reading the instructions, which it must be said could stand a little work as they are not what I'd class as quite adequate (poor translationn seemingly is the greatest problem).
Anyway, I managed to work out the charging rate situation it was trying to explain. It all got a bit easier once I knocked up a spreadsheet to figure out the maths - thank heaven maths does not take a lot to translate - I suspect I'd have been fully lost otherwise.
Sadly what the maths also revealed is that the charger is not actually capable of fully charging the cells included in the pack! They would require something over 14 hours to become fully charged according to the maths on the package, the charger is unhelpfully designed to automatically switch off after 13.5 hours, as a safety feature according to the blurb! You could indeed unplug it and top up the shortfall I must suppose, but of course that would completely defeat the touted safety feature, allowing a significantly greater than 10 hours overcharge to take place in unfortunate circumstances. This really would be quite a dangerous situation potentially, especially when mixed with the poor translation of the instructions and the assumption that the maths is not beyond a purchaser, which can not be ruled out, given a reasonable amount of thought, say, 2 seconds worth of thought at most.
It's interesting that this got out of the front door of the manufacturer as it seems to be a fully silly situation to me. I mean, the bottom line is that here we have a product which is not entirely compatible with itself, and could quite possibly lead to a dangerous situation. I'd speculate this package has been uprated with greater capacity cells to prolong the shelf life of the product cheaply; with 2000 mAh, 2100 mAh, 2200 mAh or even 2300 mAh cells it would quite probably have been absolutely fine and it's safety would probably be beyond question right now.
[edit]
In the last 24 hours I've started on doing an awful lot more research into charging and using NiMH cells. I'd estimate that I may have a month or two of rather dry reading ahead. However I'd like to stress that the research I've done so far indicates that the problems and concerns I've voiced here should be seen in perspective; that prespective suggests that the situation I've outlined here is quite possibly a lot less dangerous than some other methods this maker could have opted for, and which sadly some other makers HAVE opted for.
While the hama unit does have those potential issues, they are almost like nothing compared to the issues other makers are bringing to the table for consideration by some fairly suspect methods which they are employing.
To remain safe I'd say that the best thing to do is for now accept the undercharging situation, and as time passes maybe look into obtaining a very gentle trickle charger to "top off" batteries charged in this way, so that full capacity can be enjoyed. It's a bit of a rigamarole frankly, but does appear to be the only sensible route to go, oddly.
[/edit]
posted by iFly at 14:48
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