The making of the BLF UC4 charger: the start of a new venture, INTEREST LIST, UPDATE 7 (Well, ramping stopped :/ )

No!, not to too complex, not to complicate, the simple to be the most useful.
Yes to measure impedance (internal resistance).
Yes measure capacity (in discharge).
Yes to storage load (3,7V ).
If load 3.6V (LiFePO4), 4.20 / 4.35V (Li-ion), 1.48V (Ni-MH / Ni-Cd and 2.0 Ni-Zn.
If manual / auto charge selection.
Long bays (slots) (if you can still change casing design), future 26,800?

Just wondering if there should be a timer cut-off (eg. if battery has been charging for over xx hours, stop charging since it means the battery may not be taking in to long to charge, indicating a bad battery)… Although selecting a very low charge current to a very high capacity battery will also result in charging for very long hours… so I’m not sure how this would be done.

This would be a new “mode”. It wouldn’t complicate existing modes.
When this mode gets used, it would top off the battery, discharge it, recharge it, then display efficiency.

I agree it would be nice. :slight_smile:

Interested, please add me.

I don’t think I’ve seen mention of this type of metric before.

I don’t think it would have much impact on wall-outlet based charging as the only different would be a little time. Charging from a limited supply like a solar cell though, I can see where you might want to know which cells will use the least source current to achieve a full charge.

I also don’t think this is an actual, distinct mode. What you’re asking for is just an additional calculation based on a standard Full Test. I see the biggest challenge being finding space on the display to show it.

Yea I thought it up.
For the flashlight community, you are right, efficiency is just a matter of a little more time on the charger. But for the DIY Powerwall community, battery efficiency would be very interesting and could identify poor performers.

Battery efficiency may even identify batteries in the early stages of self-discharge issues. :sunglasses:

Count me in

i’m interested

in please

count me in for one.

This seems amazing, put me down for one

I’m interested in this charger, count with me.

In for one. Thank you!!

Would be interesting. How about real internal resistance measurement? How about tolerance for finish charging/discharging voltage? Especially I prefer finish voltage less than 4.2V, better 4.19 minus .05V .

I’m interrested in 1.

I like the display of the XTAR VC4S. It shows all information for all channels at the same time.
I also want two USB outputs for loading i-phone etc.
This reduces further power supply units.

Here are the additions since last week’s update and the BLF INTEREST LIST file linked to in post #1 have been updated too.
The interest list count now stands at 404 chargers.

POST # NAME
915 Tete
917 micknatt
918 Lipfit2000
919 mavortium
920 brenden23
921 ISO
922 iamnuts
923 4141003
924 scarnific
925 P33
926 Marc E
927 alex64
928 Kiltan
929 redsuns
931 LOTL
932 bmansc
933 Flying Luminosity
938 borealis
942 Muto
943 der_horst
944 opbigdave
945 netgear68
946 patchythepirate
947 Petr Sixta
948 dnei519blf
949 mkor100
950 t-soung

Looks very nice!

One qestion, maybe it came up already, but I only see low voltage recovery for li-ion.
It is one of the things I dislike on the opus, when trying to recharge fully depleted NIMH I always need to “jump start” them in order to get recognised.

Will this problem be solved on the BLF charger? That alone is a good reason for purchase!

9V battery support would be another bonus.

@t-soung, sorry, but I won’t be including a second USB port on the design. Feature freeze has been done for a long time.

Upping the USB port current from 900mA to 1500mA would be an option however.

@Dutcheee, I do not think it is a good idea, but I’ll consider it a bit.
No 9V battery support, sorry. No more features to be added.