Hey ya’ll. So I was looking at the new Olight magnetic charger online when I remembered the charging modules and countersunk magnets that I had ordered off Ebay a while back and this gave me an idea.
Before reading further please be advised that these chargers do NOT have reverse polarity protection. It is the soul responsibility of the user to make sure that the positive lead from the charger is ALWAYS connected to the positive terminal on the battery and same with negative to negative. If you do not know what this means, please familiarize yourself before building one of these chargers.
While the charger DIY option does not have auto-reverse when it comes to polarity, it works just swimmingly for quickly zapping those 18650s and 26650s with 1A current on a friendly CC-CV rhythm using magnetic contacts.
The bottom line for this DIY charger is basically the bottom line. This whole magnetic 1A charger can literally be assembled by most anyone for under $1. And while it may not be as slick and streamline as the new Olight charger, you can certainly still add a little stream in the line for this DIY option. Here’s the video I duct taped together, using only sheer genius, on how to make your own Olight or maybe Dlight, F-light?, Firelight! No, LightFire!!! magnetic charger. Thank you guys for all your blahblahblahblah
I wonder how simple of a polarity changer circuit could be made and work reliably? I’m thinking solid state relay that uses the voltage from the cell, however low it might be, to turn on the charger circuit only in the right direction/polarity for that cell. IIRC, there are already USB charger PCB’s on the OSH Park site. Someone could copy one of those and add the auto-reverse circuit. That would really make this a professional solution that even people who don’t know anything could use without blowing themselves up.
Wow, I actually thought the charging board had reverse polarity protection. I just tested it with the temperature gun and thermal is running towards popping and snarling. Time to go put some big annotations on my video. Thanks for your post.
I went and put a bunch of warnings about no reverse polarity protection on my YT video. Would have been good if I had conveyed the info in the video, but it should be sufficiently transparent to the facts of this issue now.
I notice that most of the vendors who sell these chargers don’t make it clear that there is no reverse polarity feature. Probably a big part of the reason that I hadn’t been aware of it. That, and I’m just a bit thick sometimes.
