The new version of the TP4056 & advices.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000121587747.html

I see US$0.15 for the goods and US$0.53 for shipping to the US.

They don’t charge for shipping to Poland. :slight_smile:
And SS34 is even cheaper, 12 cents shipped. :wink:

The deal Agro posted isn't a good one for me, AliExpress Saver surcharge gets added.

However, I made another search and found this SS32 100-pack: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32842657334.html

Which in my case is €1.11 + €0.99 = €2.10 including AliExpress Saver shipping. The actual price is $1.20, with free shipping to the US.

Guess there's no point for me to buy those now, but I wonder how much actual difference may be.

Maybe if I can scavenge some SS12 from a motherboard somewhere…

What's up?

Agro, how did it went with your TP4056 + SS32 schottky endeavour? If you already did it, of course.

I understand this may be a bit senseless but, did you measured the forward voltage of the SS32s by testing them with a multimeter? I tested 3 SS54s from the pack I bought, 0.191 - 0.193V between the leads of my Bside ZT102 (Zotek ZT102, Aneng AN8002; the diode testing current must be ≈3mA).

I myself am to modify an old Coleco Pac-Man and power it with 2x 18650 cells in parallel, using 2x TP4056 boards for charging and over discharge protection. Using my precision PSU I saw the game would run well all the way down to 2.5V and somewhat lower, and could not notice any display dimming until ≈2.75V or so. So, it's a perfect candidate for 1S li-ion conversion.

Of course I am somewhat saying the above because, to be able to make use of the boards' DW01 + 8205 management chips, I started thinking in putting a 5V SPDT relay at the OUT+ so it would switch to the voltage dropping schottky diodes when charging, and keep the MOSFET bleeding resistor path intact when not charging but :facepalm: no way. Just a reverse biased schottky diode does it, with the tiny amount of power the DW01 drains the drop will be ≈0.2V, still plenty of gate voltage (the 8205 works fine at ≈2.5V VGS and even lower).

I’m waiting for the diodes.

Guys, I have a slight problem and was hoping someone has an idea on how to fix this. When having a battery connected to the TP4056 board and the voltage falls under the over-discharge treshold the battery is cut off from the load, but as soon as it is cut off the battery rests and the voltage goes back up slightly enough to disable the over-discharge and it’s connected back to the load and then disconected again from the load. This loop goes on for quite some time and it is not a good situation at all for the load, nor the battery. Does anyone know how to fix this? Like make it not disable the over-discharge unles charging has been started or until the voltage gets to at least 3-3.1V. Thanks!

Patrikr1, even if the cell is cut-off at ≈2.4V it is a sure thing its voltage will climb back up above 3V for at least a truckload of times (the overdischarge release voltage for DW01 protection chips is 3.0±0.1V, in fact).

I once set a li-ion cell in parallel direct drive with an led, and let it discharge until the led was barely lit. It took days, and after disconnecting the cell and let it rest for a nice while its voltmeter measured no load voltage still was 2.99V.

Having said that, I do not think there's a problem with what you experience.

You may want to wait for others to chime in, though.

A 10 pack of SS32 diodes has arrived today. Yes, 15 cents shipped. :slight_smile:
But I won’t have the energy to play with them this evening, will report once I’m ready.

OK, just tested 2 diodes. 0.176 and 0.180V with Uni-T UT120B. But I fail to see what current does it use.

Agro, maybe you can try to use another multimeter in the mA range to measure the current the Uni-T UT120B uses for diode measuring.

I don’t have a DMM capable of measuring low currents, only UT210E (which shows 209 mV on both BTW).
I could solder some leads to a SMD resistor and measure voltage drop but my only resistors over 100 mOhm are 0603…
So I chained together 2 wire bundles which gave me a whooping 2 ohm.
I probably do something wrong because I almost run out of alligator clips on this setup (small clip holds wire, another holds lead, large clip holds both small clips….and so on).
Got 0.181 mV Vf and 0V voltage drop. :frowning:

In my experience the one multimeter to measure the current of another works well, a while ago I could measure 1.29mA from my ooold Mastech M92A in diode mode using my Bside ZT102, then measured my salvaged test SK54 using it and I could read 142mV, which makes sense. I cannot use the M92A to measure the ZT102 current, I blew it up a couple years ago trying to measure mains voltage with the thing in shunt mode, it startled me :-D quite a bit and it was the main reason I bought the ZT102.

Yeah, but to measure current I have only a clamp. Neither dmm can make ?current measurement with probes…

OK, I went a little further with it.

  1. I soldered two diodes together. Vf dropped to 0.160 and 0.186 depending on the DMM
  2. I looked closer at the boards that I received. It turned out that I got a variant with protection circuit and TC4056A.
    I fail to find some test of that IC so I don’t know if it’s any good. :confused:
    I went to start a dispute but I see that the auction actually states that the board uses a different IC in this variant though the title spells TP4065. This is also consistent with the pics. No way to win a dispute even though I was actually mislead and I’d rather buy some other board. :confused:
    Looking online for tests of this IC, I don’t see any. Though somebody mentiones that TC4056 (without A) is good enough.
  3. Where is the sense resistor? The board layout is different from the one HKJ tested, so I can’t use that pic as a reference. I found a numnber of similar pics showing different variants but not mine. Fortunately the datasheet for TC4056A is available and after some eyeballing I found the empty space marked C4 (!!) where I think the sense resistor should be located….
    Empty space is not a warning flag by itself as the datasheet states that the resistor is optional and when it’s missing the current is set to 1A.
  4. I soldered that 303 0603 resistor to the board with the highest termination voltage (4.17-4.18V).
  5. Check no-battery voltage - 4.17V. So maybe I didn’t break it. :wink:
  6. I soldered the diode pair to the board
  7. I measured voltage with no battery. Swings wildly, sometimes I see 0V, sometimes junk data, sometimes 4.15-4.16V

Did I solder the diode wrong? I soldered diode anode to the batt+.
batt+ / batt- voltage is still 4.17V
The diode pair still shows some of 0.16V Vf when measured with UT120B and when I test it with UT210E - swings between nothing and 0.18xV as I move the probe around the solder at the cathode.

Suggestions?

Agro, you did it right I think. The multimeter uses a very high impedance to measure voltage, hence the voltage at the output after versus before the schottkies is basically the same. Now connect a battery to the board and test the thing. I did not test mine yet but as I said before if you need to use the protection circuitry, pulling power from P−, you'll need a schotty diode in reverse between B/P+ and the cell anode. :-)

Thanks Barkuti. :slight_smile:
Now it’s time to connect some cell and verify that charging current is 50 mA as it should…
but I don’t have a DMM that could measure that. :weary:
OK, now I really need a new DMM….which will arrive probably around the end of the year…

The stuff being discussed here lately works well, Agro. Check #8 in DIY: Generic way to lower voltage termination on li-ion chargers. :-)

Thanks, I missed that thread. :slight_smile:

Miraculously my UT139C has arrived in 17 days. Not only it was a superb deal, it was one of the fastest packages I got from China.
So…

  1. I can now officially tell that a pair of diodes has Vf of 166 mV at 550µA and 192 mV at 1.23mA.
  2. I tried measuring charging current. I connected it all with Liitokala 26650 (a big cheap cell that won’t be much damaged in case of a short - if I got something wrong). Expected current - 50 mA. After connecting it with the DMM in the loop the charger wouldn’t start. But after I switched the DMM from mA to A - it started. 110 mA.
    I switched the cell to 10440. The indicator LED shows it’s charging. The DMM sways between 0.001 and 0.000A.

I don’t know what to think about it.