I agree with a few others commenting here that, at the intended price and with all the features to be included, I realized from the beginning that it is somewhat unrealistic to expect a manufacturer with current products on the market that do not include all of these features, yet cost much more, to sell us this charger. So, the reaction of the proposed manufacturer is not surprising to me. That’s one reason I went ahead and bought a new charger recently.
What is somewhat surprising to me is that the email from the manufacturer was sent and received “a while back.” When a thread is asking people to express at least a tentative commitment to purchase a product, information having a significant impact about the future of the project should ideally be revealed in the thread as soon as is possible, barring personal emergencies preventing this.
That being said, I appreciate all of the work done by BlueSwordM to try to provide a new product that would provide value in features and performance that probably has not been equaled before. I also appreciate the thoughtful input offered by many other members. Maybe this effort will, in time, produce a new and unique product, although it might not be exactly at this price and in this form.
Yes, Xtar puts out new charger models just about every month it seems. But, they tend to concentrate on plug & play versions, where there’s very little manual control of things like charging current. They do have some limited control on some models, though. If they would add a max voltage setting, as well as some limited selection of currents, that would be good enough for me.
That’s also my observation with Xtar — they do “plug & play” versions. Even their top-end Xtar Dragon doesn’t have some features I think are necessary (as in voltage display, not just “estimated percentage charged”), and also individual slot control (not all slots are currently in “test” mode or in “charging” mode).
Opus doesn’t seem to have any new chargers (BT-C3100 or BT-C100 is still good, but are lacking some features compared to some newer chargers) — are they still in the charger-manufacturing?
Actually, I like the Miboxer (I’ve tested the Miboxer C4-12 and Miboxer C8). While the C4-12 developed problem, the Miboxer C8 I have has not had problems yet. I think the “problem” may be (in the faulty Miboxer C4-12 message thread here, someone mentioned changing the MOSFET will repair the problem) in using not-as-good parts that failed. So far, I’ve noticed that the Miboxer charger charges my lithium-ion batteries closest to 4.20v almost all the time, compared to other chargers I tried — so if they have a setting for adjusting end-charging-voltage, then maybe that will be a good option (ie. ability to charge to around 85-90% full), and a “storage” mode. So far Miboxer doesn’t have an analyzing charger at this time (the C2-4000 appears to be discontinued).
I don’t see SkyRC doing this since the MC3000 seems to be able to do much of what the BLF UC4 feature list does, other than the MC3000 may be a bit difficult to control/program for people who want an easier-to-use charger (using the MC3000 for nearly 2 years regularly, I don’t find it any more difficult other than the extra step to choose the “program #” when I insert different batteries for the slot I’m doing a charging/testing)…
Anyway, just my random thoughts… Hoping that the BLF UC4 (or whatever it will be named) will still be continued (or at least inspire charger manufacturers to incorporate some or most of the features, at-a-still reasonable price level)
I talked to the guys at SkyRC probably about a year ago or so and they said the boss is not interested in changing anything on the MC3000 and have moved onto other projects. Would have been nice if they had a more user friendly UI and figured out why very often the mc3000 misreads batteries IR.
If you find it misreads IR like most other chargers , clean the contacts , if You ever take it apart you should clean the rails with deoxit or similar,also clean the - & + contacts on the cells .
Mine is very consistent every time ,I also did this to my opus & it to is now consistent,if I minus 30 from the opus reading it more or less agrees with the sky rc .
Based on their email and how early in the process it still is, I don’t think any evil was done. If they make a charger with some BLF wishes built in, yay.
Batteries have very low internal resistances, its order of magnitude is close to that of a charger's rail plus its contact resistances. These consumer chargers sense voltage changes somewhere in the circuit board, after the load current goes through all of the rail plus contacts plus cell group. This makes proper cell internal resistance measurement… impossible this way.
To properly measure the internal resistance of a cell, variations of voltage drop with flow of current need to be observed right at the terminals of a cell or battery. This is the reason proper battery testing setups use 4-wire battery holders.
Deal with it people. This does not mean having a standard charger with internal resistance measurement guessing is bad. I like it, lets you know if you need to clean the rail or cell contacts, for example.
@Kevin K and Barkuti. Thanks for the reminder, I really forgot to clean and lube the rails on my second mc3000 as I did the first one. My first one failed and GB was nice enough to send me a new one, so I need to do that again.
This! is, for me, the worst UI feature in the MC3000. I seldom charge/discharge 3 or 4 cells at any given time. Most of my charging chores are for my (edc) single 14500 or AA/AAA cells…and during this time, I mostly fill up the other slots with other cells (nimh, lilo) just to make use of the charger with ANY combination (charge, discharge, refresh, break-in, etc as the need/want arises…and I don’t want to remember AT ALL the program number of any of the combinations that I will be setting. For this reason I never used my MC3000 again.
BLF has worked on dozens of successful projects over many years and there are projects underway with major manufacturers right this moment. These projects always have a BLF member as project leader with many other people helping as necessary.
Look at the BLF LT1, for example. This project’s lead designer was DBSAR and his name is printed across the bottom of the lantern. It includes hardware and software from other forum members and Sofirn has sold thousands of them. It was originally being developed with Thorfire, but transferred to Sofirn.
The way BLF tends to work is to submit design proposals and have them approved and prototyped by company engineers. This back and forth process has led to not only many successful products, but entire products lines for the manufacturers involved.
If the “boss” didn’t like the idea of working with BLF, he or she probably doesn’t know anything about BLF projects. Sure, not all projects will succeed or be completed, but that doesn’t mean that BlueSwordM is “arrogant” for attempting it. That’s not fair in light of the many BLF projects which have followed a similar development path.
Ah, perhaps best to just check the Master Thread HERE .
Thank you BlueSwordM. I appreciate the work you’ve done here and hope that I can soon get a charger like this for a reasonable price. Best of luck with school, as well!
If the project becomes more open as a result, then all the better, but my experience is that too many cooks won’t have a meal ready before everyone starves to death.
Hi, below are additions since last update and the BLF INTEREST LIST file linked to in post #1 have been updated too.
The interest list count now stands at 575 chargers.
I can understand someone being skeptical of a bunch of “armchair” “kitchen table” (or whatnot) ‘engineers’ But looking at the examples from this group and looking over some of the discussions and work done by people in here, it’s pretty obvious that there are a lot of high caliber people in here. And the products that have come out of this group clearly hold their own against anything in the market.
After all it’s not like a bunch of people in a truck group telling Ford how they should configure their diesel trucks. Ford has hundreds of engineers and PhD’s working on their projects.
In less mature areas of development many of the advances have been done in garages and basements.
There’s a lot of merit to that statement. Back in early 2010 NASA brass were exploring the idea of going back to the Moon first, then Mars by 2024 2040 respectively. They needed a new rocket/launch vehicle. Naturally, they looked to existing designs first, but they couldn’t use the Shuttle. Developing a new vehicle is very expensive. The only candidate they had that could get a vehicle out of earth’s orbit to the moon was the Saturn V. However, it hadn’t flown or any parts been made since the late 1970’s. They tried to engineer the F1 and J2 engines from existing designs and blueprints, but came up short in several key areas. The engineers and designers who worked on those engines and built them were either passed away or otherwise unavailable. The way they documented changes in designs on the fly, working at 1 AM figuring out why things didn’t work when they should meant no records of some key design flaws and changes and the fixes for them were long gone, written down on scratch paper, napkins, dry erase or chalk boards. The 100% reliability of the F1 engine was due to tens of thousands of hours of sweat, tears, cigarettes, coffee, and long days and nights in the lab and shops.
Without the experience, they went with the Space Shuttle main engine and SRB configuration for the new SLS. I think about the flashlight mods I’ve done and how I fixed or improved stuff the BLF members designs and ideas have inspired them! I think that manufacturers can learn a lot from armchair engineers and backseat designers!
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