this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 hour ago

All u did was decrease the life span of power bank

[–] RampantParanoia2365 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I nearly did this by accident a few nights ago. I was worried I almost killed it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Most banks can't charge and discharge at the same time.
If they did, worst case it heats up as it moves the energy around until it runs out due to losses or blows up.
Nothing that can go wrong really.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

...or blows up.

Nothing that can go wrong really.

hmmm

[–] RampantParanoia2365 1 points 1 hour ago

Yeah, that's actually worse than I thought it might be, lol

[–] Entropywins 7 points 16 hours ago

Battery pack loopback test successful...

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 day ago (2 children)

No you shorted your battery

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

I'm pretty sure both directions are regulated, and the only reason it went up is some slight change in the voltage reading due to temperature or somesuch. All that I believe will happen here is that the battery, due to generating a bit of heat, will discharge itself at a safe rate.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm not sure though


the power output and the charging input are both regulated and (almost certainly) current limited. So I think (not positive...) that you're basically dissipating your power in the inefficiency the charging and output circuits, with this power coming from the battery.

The inefficiency should (I think...) just be the round-trip inefficiency of the charging/discharging of your power bank


this should be way, way less than the short-circuit power dissipation.

The simplest toy model is to take a battery and try to charge itself. So you put jumpers on the + terminal and you connect those to the + terminal, and same for - (charging is + to +, NOT + to -). But this is silly because you've just attached a loop of wire to your terminals, which is equivalent to doing nothing. With charging circuits in between things get much more complicated, but I'm not sure if it goes full catastrophic short...

[–] [email protected] 13 points 23 hours ago (4 children)

I think you're right and I was just memeing, but I'm curious how the battery percentage went up

[–] myplacedk 2 points 4 hours ago

I guess that running power in a circle like that as fast as possible might heat up the battery, which reduces internal resistance, which increases battery voltage during load, which tricks the sensor that uses voltage to estimate charge.

It similar to when a fully charged but very cold car battery cannot start a car, as if the battery was discharged. Then you turn on the cars lights for a while, which to the cold batter is a significant load. The battery heats up, and then you can start the car.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I think the charge controller counts the amount of energy that has passed through it.

[–] BarbecueCowboy 10 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

You're probably mostly correct. Some of them do literally count that, but (to my knowledge) most measure voltage as a battery with lower charge usually outputs less and vice versa.

[–] Sterile_Technique 6 points 23 hours ago

My guess is it didn't, and the numbers were pulled out the OP's ass.

Otherwise, idk how power banks monitor their percentage of charge, but being that it's a percentage, if you fuck up the capacity, the same amount of energy will take up a higher percentage of that capacity. /shrug

[–] [email protected] 6 points 23 hours ago

I'm curious how the battery percentage went up

Physicists hate this one weird trick...

[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 day ago

In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!!

[–] [email protected] 75 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Does burning down your own house count as science? Give this guy a medal!

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Only if you blast Talking Heads while doing it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Is that true though? As in, is it really that dangerous? It seems that you'll dissipate power equal to the inefficiency times the nominal charging power, so something like 5V x 2A x inefficiency (inefficiency being 1-efficiency), which will probably be of order a watt.

I can use my car battery to charge itself without any issues


I just plug the red terminal to itself, and same with the black, which is to say, a battery is always connected in a way that "charges itself."

I think the key is that the battery probably isn't really playing a big role in OOP's setup


electricity doesn't "go through the battery," it just goes from the charging input to the power output circuits, with the additional power (due to inefficiency) being provided by the battery.

[–] marcos 3 points 1 day ago

No anymore, but if you destroy it in some more interesting way...

[–] random_character_a 34 points 1 day ago

Just informed to the Nobel comittee.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 day ago

Yea just gotta bring it on a plane and strap a coundown timer to it that makes loud beeping sounds

[–] DragonsInARoom 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

My heart can't take it anymore