this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2024
27 points (96.6% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35982 readers
1723 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I am asking for a single device that can not only charge all common battery types, LiPo, LiHv, LiIon, LiFe, NiMh and NiCd. But also it can test them for capacity, health and faults automatically. Basically, you put any (rechargeable) battery insode and the device tells you if the battery is ok to use, what current and max capacity are, all while the battery gets charged.

If such a device does not exist, what would come closest?

top 9 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Chargers for RC model vehicles (car, airplane, helicopter) can do most if not all of that stuff, but you will have to be comfortable with soldering connectors as there is no universal standard connector system for any of the battery types you mentioned, and even standard size 18650/21700 cells are rarely used for RC purposes. The RC hobby has mainly settled on XT60 and its smaller cousin XT30 as the closest you'll find to a standard, but even within the hobby many batteries use other connectors. Snipping leads and soldering connectors is not an optional skill, the currents involved can be very large and will easily melt a poor connection made with poor skills or some hacky clip-on connector.

For charging, this is the sort of thing I use, no promises. RC chargers also include a balancing system to allow it to balance different cells across an entire battery pack but you will have to have individual wires junctioned in between each of those cells so it can sense their voltage and top them up as needed.

Also most RC chargers don't bother having anything to do with lead acid (automotive style 12V or otherwise), as they are much too high amperage and heavy for any sort of RC use and they use a wildly different charging design and have much more complex health monitoring and maintenance needs. Not recommended for that, use an automotive, marine or off-grid style battery maintainer and repairer for those. The one I linked says it does handle SLA (sealed lead acid) but I wouldn't trust it to do a good job. Compromises have likely been made. You'd be better off with a dedicated unit for those if you are going to be dealing with them.

[–] NeoNachtwaechter 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

all while the battery gets charged.

Any smart charging device can only make a guess at the max. capacity unless it does a full load/unload/load cycle.

[–] Know_not_Scotty_does 8 points 1 week ago

I think some of the smarter rc chargers can do most of that. Its mostly for smaller capacity stuff though.

[–] abominable_panda 5 points 1 week ago

Check Opus and Maha branded intelligent chargers

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I'm not aware of a combined health system and charging system. Although, as another commenter said, some RC chargers come close. But it also depends on the battery types you're wanting to use.

Why are you looking for this, though?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I have some chargers for my RC helicopters days. They're awesome. They can charge almost any battery type (although it took ages to charge my 12V 200Ah AGM battery), and when it's done it plays a small fanfare.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

I have quite a few old-ish batteries lying around, mostly LiPo 18650 and NiMh cells, and do not have a way to test them. Also my charger is not so capable. Therefore I was wondering if I could get a device with which I can test and charge any of them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Curious why you'd care about nicad? Or is it just for the sake of completeness?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Just for completeness. I mostly have LiPo and NiMh cells.