Small battery charger-analyzer

I’m looking for a charger-analyzer that can be used to test batteries down to 10180 size (or maybe even 10160). For this reason the lowest charge current available can’t exceed 100 mA.
And did I say that I’m into budget options? :wink:

Is there anything on the market really?

There is the opus BT-C100 Single cell analizing charger.
But lowest charge current is 200mA

I like the opus, but the counterfeit IMAX b6 could do that and usually around $15

I should have noted - I need the analysis rather than charging. For the latter I have a Cottonpickers 50 mAh and a couple of Liitokalas already.

Unfortunately, 100 mAh is 1-1.5 C already, can’t go any higher than that.

Looks very good. I see that a genuine b6 can go down to 100 mA, measure capacity and IR. And counterfeits indeed cost around $15.
I don’t see counterfeits mentioning analysis though. Can I expect to have it (and to have both IR and capacity)? And overall, what quality can I expect from a counterfeit?

For an IMAX you will also need a power supply.
In terms of quality……it’s a counterfeit> anything from just fine to “I wish I hadn’t bought this”. For ~$10 more you can get an Accucell-6 or a real IMAX. You may or may not get IR on it. That feature comes and goes. You can’t necessarily believe the advertising, especially on counterfeit sites.

I believe I saw the opus at $13 or something (it’s the single bay version). I don’t own this one but the cool thing is that u can use the discharge function without it being plugged in. But if you need lower discharge rate you need to look for something else.

Just looked it up, now $16-17 but maybe I saw it somewhere else cheaper or you might find a coupon for it.
http://www.gearbest.com/chargers/pp_345597.html

What’s the B6 PSU plug? I have an universal AC PSU, so I can supply the right voltage. But will likely need a plug adapter.

Anyway, it’s a tough call. How can I know if I buy a genuine? If I go to shops that seem trustworthy it’s like $40 + plug adapter, too much for me. If I buy a $25 one from unknown source, I may get a counterfeit too. If I intentionally buy a counterfeit, it’s $15, but I can’t trust that it has any accuracy.
Also, I read that one needs to calibrate B6, yet I don’t have equipment that I’d trust to be any better than the charger….
Need to think more about it.

As to Opus, sadly 200 mA is way too much. 100 is the upper limit and I’d really prefer 50. 100 is the maximum that I’d apply to a 10180. And even that only for a one-time test as it’s very stressful for the cell. I think 100 is too much to do even once to 10160, so by going with IMAX / Accucell I resign from being able to test such cells. This is not perfect, but easily acceptable. I don’t have any 10160 light and don’t expect to get one soon (for the lack of suitable candidates). But I think it’s a nice size for a necklace light and if more 10160s appear, I will gladly get one. Or several.

i have been using ISDT SC-608 and for Watt/dollar this is the best value and with nice screen too, the quality is way better than Imax B6 and size is really small. You just have to build your own 18650 holder.

Bought this around $35.

I have this holder set the 18650 in serial config for charging 2/3/4 18650 from the same light since they need to be in almost similar state of charge.
I just use a regular 18650 charger to charge batteries with different state of charge

Finally got some deal for ISDT SC-608, $30. Hoped for less, but it took some waiting to get this low already.
Thanks for everyone’s contribution.

My charger arrived…but it needs external PSU. I missed that fact. And the original one costs twice as much as the charger.
Any suggestions on what should I use?

Took me some time to make my SC-608 work, but it’s finally working.
With a laptop power adapter, an adapter cable and a pair of magnetic leads.

I intended to use it for analysis only, but now that I see that it has a function to discharge to storage voltage I may use it much more.
The question is: if I make a balance cradle will I be able to just throw in a bunch of unrelated batteries and put them to storage voltage together?

How did/do you connect them, series or parallel?
It’s never a good idea to connect cells that have very different states of charge.

Right now I have just a pair of wires to connect 1 cell.
I see that the charger allows connecting them in series, with balance connection between each pair. I wonder if it could use it to supply each cell with exactly the voltage that it needs to follow the CC/CV curve. Or even to get discharged while charging others.

Well the charger is designed for charging battery packs that consist out of multiple cells in series… But for seperate cells I choose to connect them in parallel to charge them. I n parallel you can hook up cells with different capacity as long as the voltage of each cell is not to far apart of each other (within 1volt should be fine). Don’t know how it would work for discharging. The I don’t think it is a good idea to connect cells with different capacity in series.

Thanks for clarification. :slight_smile:

Pretty sure the BT-C100 has some current feedback sense resistor laying somewhere on its circuit board. Output current is proportional to the inverse of the resistor value: double it for half the current output, 2.5x it for 40%, 3x it for ⅓, quad it for 50mAh lowest current…