LiitoKala Lii-S1, successor of the revered Lii-100

Not sure how helpful that would be since you’ll be monitoring incoming current at 5V instead of outgoing current to the cell at whatever voltage the cell is at a given point in the charging process. I guess one could calculate this out, based on some efficiency factor.

Well, I’ve just come back from reading HKJ’s review, and yes, LiitoKala have disappointed me as well.

I’ll be breaking my Lii-S1 chargers up for parts when they arrive, and sticking with my trusty Lii-100 chargers instead.

So true, but it’s the best I can do without putting the battery in series with a with my Fluke or current clamp while charging. I’ll rig it up when I have time.

Final battery voltage right after termination was 4.2246 Volts

Yup. Simple enough to do. I made a little tab from a piece of PCB and I soldered two short pieces of wire to it so that I can connect a DMM with aligator clips to it. Not pretty, but it works. :slight_smile:

I have to order some circuit board material. It’s funny because in my early days I worked for a circuit board manufacturer. My company used to buy all sorts of grades from G10, FR4, teflon, etc in 4 x 8 feet sheets. I took home scraps back in the 70’s. I gave away some to my electronic buddies, the rest got lost in the shuffle after I moved. It kills me that I have to buy some now… lol

Just sent this telling-off email to sales@liitokala.com.cn:

Hello,
Regarding my previous inquiry:
https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/49693/86
https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/50712 HKJ's review.
Charger DOES NOT DISPLAYS REAL TIME STATUS OF CURRENT FLOW via sense resistor voltage drop measurement and conversion (as you claimed previously in your answer).
It also has some issues, like a very dim top-off charge for li-ion cells (detrimental) and maybe too early current tapering. On top of this, seems like it's not very robust.
Hope this is of service to you.
Best regards,
Salvador Barqueros
Cheers

I checked the trickle charge after terminating at about 160-170 ma. When it terminated, there was no trickle charge for about 10 seconds. After that, I was getting a 6 milliamp reading for a few seconds, then zero maybe every 15 seconds, then it would repeat. I let this happen a few time before I removed the battery. Any thoughts?

BTW, I used my Fluke 189 in series with the battery.

Three ordered in the sale for $8.78 but only two received.
Package looked like it had been sat on but contents intact apart from crushed boxes and no sign of the third ever being shipped.
Tried to get my $2.92 back but requirement for documentation and video
evidence defeated me- life is too short.
I assume that this is part of their cunning plan.

Yeah, I mentioned elsewhere, maybe one of the GB threads, about taking a quick video of the Grand Unboxing, especially if anything looks suspicious. Ie, video yourself actually cutting any sealing tape, etc., for the first time, not just videoing the contents afterward (lest ye be accused of having the 3rd one in your pocket or something).

Annoying, but can save lots of grief afterward.

So then $8.78 for two pieces, isn't it cloggy? Still not a bad deal, though of course this is no excuse for deceptive practices.

When a deal looks like a steal, better watch out. Yesterday I ordered a Lii-100 in AliExpress via this advertisement, paid just 2.87€ (AliExpress Saver Shipping included, reachs home in two weeks or less) when all other sales were above 4€. Logged in a few hours ago last evening and, after checking out the removed listing, sent the seller a message to get confirmation that the sale was right and he didn't removed the listing because of price error. Just in case.

Cheers ^:)

Do you mean parallel to the battery? In series you shouldn’t get a voltage reading. Or has the fluke a wattmeter?

I meant milliamps, sorry. I fixed my post.

atbglenn
I am not a big battery charger expert, but I guess it is some kind of sensing, battery there, what kind and how full. Don’t think its charging anything with 16mA and pwm 1 to 15 seconds.
Normal operation is when the charger says its full remove it.

I generally think people worry too much about a few mili-something. Hey it is electrochemistry.
I want also mention there are LiIon-bags with 4.35V termination voltage.
And LG does its live cycle test down to 2V under load.

But you can ask HKJ in his review of the charger

What atbglenn reports is said to happen by Henrik, just look at the published graphs. Namely:

Cycle period is 40 seconds, with 2 second pulses of ≈10mA (5% duty cycle). This actually is a quite small amount of current, like charging at a ratio of 0.5mA. The question is to know if the device is actually raising voltage above maximum charging voltage or not, though in any case this is mostly an annoyance rather than anything to worry about.

Cheers ^:)

What’s frustrating about this charger is that based on HKJ’s graphs, charging an 18650 cell at 1A takes more or less the same amount of time as charging it at 0.5A (over 6 hours), and that’s because when you choose 1A, the charger immediately starts reducing charging current. Asinine.

Seriously? :|

Mmm, it's not exactly that serious, but sucks anyway.

Know what? Just remembered that a couple days after this (telling off) I did, got email from sales@liitokala.com.cn requesting me to add their Skype or whatever. Passed…

Cheers ^:)

Got mine today. One thing I noticed so far is that it is sensitive to the power source. For example, when I connect it to my Anker 2.4A USB wall charger and set it to charge a NiMH cell at 1A, the S1 reboots itself within about a minute, and then goes back to 0.5A current. But no reboot when I feed it power from my laptop’s USB 3.0 port. Weird. My Lii-100 does not care.

I’ll do some more testing later to see if I’m getting the same Li-Ion charge curve at 1A as HKJ did.

Below is my 1A charging curve, using a button-top 30Q cell. Cell was at 3.1V when charging started; 4.19V when removed from charger. 3h:22m total charging time.

It looks better than HKJ’s curve - at least it maintains 1A for some time. Current started dropping when voltage on the charger’s display was at around 4.00V.

I’m wondering if input power has something to do with the charge curve. I should probably re-do the test, this time using that Anker USB wall charger that was causing issues when charging NiMH at 1A and see what impact (if any) it has on the Li-Ion charge curve.

It looks more like my 1A rev curve from before I damaged the charger and also the replacement charger.

6 or 60?

I’m seeing spikes up to 60 mA (0.06A), but my little DMM isn’t particularly quick to refresh, so it may not be very accurate.