Home Depot Deal Alerts & Discussion Thread

You are right, 4Ah = 4000mAh

Most power banks have 1 or more cells in parallel and their voltage has to be boosted to the 5V output that is required. If there were 5 cells in a power bank, each having a capacity of 2000mAh, they would rate the power bank at the sum total of the capacities of all the cells, 10,000 mAh.
Power banks aren’t usually made this way, but if they used those same 5 cells in series and bucked the voltage down to 5V, they would still call it a 10,000 mAh power bank.
18V Ridgid, Milwaukee, Ryobi, etc power tool batteries use 5 cells in series, 21V fully charged. So a 4Ah, 18V battery would have 10 2000mAh cells in a 5S2P configuration.
Hence the 20,000 mAh rating.

DCH those fire alarms went on clearance a while back, must be a new one out. I’m not sure why the UPC is the same? But they have the same ones on the shelf… These were a little dusty and the plastic cracked and I recalled seeing them a while back, so I scanned them and they were a penny.

Those routers are 3 price here as well, I don’t need any but if they hit a penny I do. There is also 2 wifi range extenders at the 3 price and should penny out when the routers do, I will take a pic of them tomorrow.

I’m also still looking for a compressor, with such a subtle difference I should be able to find one mixed in. I saw a few at the beginning and they were sold or “hidden” at the 4 price.

I look in the battery recycling boxes everytime I’m in HD and grab the packs with lithium ion’s in them, 95% of the packs I find are ryobi packs. Which is not a bad thing, typically they have samsungs or lg 18650’s and only 1 cell is usually bad.

Have you ever tried to replace just the bad cell? I was hoping to find some dewalt batteries because that’s the tools I use. I don’t own any ryobi’s or I would fix one of those. If I can find a dewalt pack I was going to attempt to fix it.

The black and decker car battery booster has a 2A USB out but its simply a linear USB device, the 2000mAh batteries will charge my phone once despite its 6 battery setup, i found that very annoying, should be able to charge it 4-5 times.

Bort,

I think I have that same B&D Battery Booster. When I used it to charge my phone from about 10, it charges it up to 100. But after just 1 charge the LED indicator light goes from Blue thru Yellow to Red. That means it is time to recharge. That in and of itself is disturbing.
But tonight I ran a fully charged Booster thru a resistive load and measured and timed the results. It ran for 3 hours 27 minutes before shutting down. The current wavered around 1.78A and the during the discharge the output voltage was about 4.78V. So during the test the output Watt Hours was
3.5H x 1.78A x 4.78V = 29.78WH

Inside there are 6 Samsung 20Q’s in series, and the WH rating of those 6 cells would be 3.6V x 6 cells x 2AH/cell = 43.2 AH
So about 70% efficient.

Buck converters are usually more efficient that boost converters, no?

picture of my unit

Ah I see what you mean.

Very interesting, so that means the indicator lights are wrong, i don’t have one of those current devices but i did go by the lights and recharge time vs current in and came to the conclusion that it was a linear driver instead of a buck driver.
So that means when i think i’m storing it at 40-50% charge (5V USB pulling out 1200mAh) i am really storing it at close to 70%?
I guess the 2 hours to gain less then 1/3 charge means the CV phase is very slow.
Thanks for the info, and I need to completely rethink its discharge level before storage.

Another possibility is that full charge is not 4.2V, if they really thought it through they would charge to 4Vish since most people would store it ready to use. Does that make sense with how much juice you pulled out of it though?

Maybe the Red indicator light means it is time the recharge if you intend to use it to boost your car

The thing for me to do now is take one apart, charge it fully and check the voltage across each cell.
Perhaps as you mentioned, full charge isn’t 4.2V across each cell, but something lower.
Also I would like to see what the voltage across each cell is when the indicator light first turns red.

I don’t expect you to go out of your way to do this but if you do i will be very appreciative :beer:

Bort, I had noticed that the indicator light turns red too after just one phone charge.
It had bothered me also, but I never really looked into it.
Somewhere in this HD thread I did a tear down of this B&D unit and I may have already done some testing.
I can’t remember :person_facepalming:
This item IS a Home Depot deal, although it wasn’t dealed at all stores at the same time. Some stores may still have them on clearance. It was an $80 device that I got for $20.03

I really like mine, I have used it several times to boost the old worn out battery in my van.
Just a couple of days ago I finally got around to replacing it with a $100 battery that I got at Home Depot for $24.03 two months ago :slight_smile:

I did not consider that the light going red could be wrong, it did seem to add up, half of 2000 mAh battery plus some overhead meaning red light does seem reasonable.
I have not needed it to boost the car yet but what i have been doing is every 3 months recharge then discharge to just before red light so that when i do need it all i have to do is charge and use it. If i’ve been keeping it at a high voltage that would suck.

Here is the link to post #1165 of this HD thread that I took the cover off and measured the capacity of a single cell. That’s as far as I got.

Here is an interesting picture from that thread showing what I think is a very sophisticated control board.

I am in the process of doing some further tests of this unit and another power booster I recently picked up at HD for $19.03
Battery Tender brand and it went on clearance at the same time the CAT stuff did.

So I removed the cover and soldered test leads across the 6 - 18650 cells in the pack, then charged it up

Per cell voltage when fully charged is 4.15V

Then I discharged the pack thru the USB connector, with the voltmeter still connected across the 6 cells

Per cell voltage as the indicator light turned Yellow was 4.00V

Per cell voltage as the indicator light turned Red was 3.85V

My take on this is that the indicator lights are tuned towards the suitability of charge for starting your car. The pack should be fully charged for that use, and anything not close to fully charged is considered in need of a charge.
However, for use as a USB power bank, the indicator light is not really useful as there is a LOT left in the pack when it first turns Red. I would say the pack is still about 75% full when the light first turns Red.

The Battery Tender unit did a bit better as a USB power bank. It ran for 3.75 Hours at 4.94V and 1.88A, or 69.5WH





This is not a clearance item, but rather a “new lower price”
Should show up in app queries and internet searches on HomeDepot.com
I checked several areas of the country and it comes up at $49.00 everywhere I checked.
Yesterday some stores around here had a smattering of them, this morning they were all gone.
YMMV

I finally found one of these

These are now $3.83 and include a voltage sensor that you can embed in the handle.

Filament bulbs on clearance!

Fascinating, thanks, i will rethink my discharge for storage

Wow! $49 for that tool chest sounds like a steal! Can’t imagine it would stay around long at that price.

-Garry

You guys are the best! I used the information provided in this thread to buy a router for $0.1 this morning! Couldn’t believe it. I first noticed the yellow tag marked $15.03, went to self checkout to scan price. It popped a penny, I went back to aisle where the remaining two were. They were gone from the shelf with the yellow tag removed when I came back. The Electrical Dept. associate observed what I did, he probably scanned the router with his code reader. When it popped a penny he must have taken them. Very few people in store at the time. No other explanation. Either way I am extremely happy! Thank you!

Why wouldn’t Home Depot have the self-checkouts set off an alarm (or at least deny the transaction and signal for an associate) when an item rings up for a penny? Especially if they’re so dead set on keeping penny items out of consumers hands! It just doesn’t make sense.

-Garry

Shhhhhhhhhh!

Not $0.1, $0.01 :slight_smile:

Which router? The NetGear?