SkyRC MC3000 help thread

Got the info back from SkyRC regarding how to set Capacity and below is what they said.

"The setting capacity is not forcibly stipulated and can be set or not set; it is only one of the auxiliary protections
When the set value is greater than the battery capacity, it will delay or not work
When the setting value is less than the battery capacity, charging will end prematurely, causing the battery to be not fully charged.
The final decision is whether the charging will stop or continue for the charger's own intelligent charging control circuit.
It is generally recommended to set a value equal to or greater than the battery capacity.

Thanks for doublechecking klrman! So, SkyRC‘s response is in line with the instructions in the manual, i.e. 20% surcharge to the cell‘s nominal capacity is a good way to get some extra safety but setting the value lower or equal might result in a not fully charged cell.

However, if I summarize the common user‘s experience on the TLF (German flashlight forum) and over here, this setting can be turned OFF for lithium ion cells for there are enough safety means in the MC3000 to prevent overcharging. For NiMH cells this CAPACITY option might make more sense as those cells sometimes have difficulties with their termination current, especially when charging at low currents.

I think you're right FlashTom, it's really more useful for NiMH cells than lithium since there is so much protection in this charger anyway. I charged some eneloops on my VC4 the other day and they seemed to get too warm for my liking, so will play around with the MC3000 and see how it goes with the eneloops. At least I can read what heat is coming out of the eneloops with the MC3000 and I think with the C4-12 too.

I find the default end voltage of Eneloops to be high (1.65v default). If the Eneloop is still a good working one, then it will likely terminate via negative-delta-v (-dv/dt).
But if the Eneloop is old (several hundred mOhms), then it just gets warm and won’t reach 1.65v (and doesn’t seem to reach negative delta v termination?). For now, I manually adjusted the end value to 1.53-1.55v (I think most other chargers are set to 1.48v), I wonder if it’s alright or not…

So much for my favorite "reliable" charger! My SkyRC MC3000 is failing badly. A few weeks ago bay #1 failed and now Bay #4 is failing. I had three MC3000's and sold two of them to my friends, which are still working fine, and I got to keep the crappy one! On a good note, GB is sending me a new one. I went over my battery logs and it shows I've used this charger 34 times so far.

I'm starting to question the long term reliability of the mc3000 as others have noted that the IR readings are starting to go all over the place. This is how it started with bay-1 with totally out of the park IR figures and then it failed and now starting with bay-4.

When you mentioned bay #1 and #4 failing, can you describe in more detail what failed?
It’s not charging properly, or not showing correct discharge capacity test?
or IR test is now “unreliable”?

My MC3000 (just exactly 1 year old now), have did capacity testing on a lot of mostly 18650s by now, and I frequently use the IR test (press UP & DOWN arrow keys simultaenously).
I’ve noticed some things: the IR testing seems to be higher than before, and I have to do a lot of tries to get the “lowest” values (which is not as low as before) — for instance, my VTC5s used to read 20+ mOhms, now they are more like 30mOhms. I thought this could be my VTC5 becoming “old” and develop higher resistance, but then I bought several new VTC5 again and they also register the “higher” IR readings than before. I think the higher IR readings are for all my batteries (I have some that I kept in storage condition and barely used — I have recorded their IR readings before, and checked again on the MC3000 and they appear to have slightly higher IR reading.)

I think my MC3000 is now giving slightly higher IR readings than before. I have cleaned the contacts (positive & negative) of the terminals but they didn’t seem to improve the IR readings. (ie. slightly higher readings than before, maybe 10-15mOhms higher than my previous jotted-down-notes for batteries I’ve tested).

Another thing: slot #3 & #4 capacity discharge test appears to give lower capacity readings than my slot #1 & slot #2. Something like a variance of 50-75mAh difference in capacity test for the same batteries tested.
(eg. if slot #1 & #2 give reading of 2650 & 2670mAh, then slot #3 & #4 may give something like 2585 or 2595mAh for those same battery…

I have yet to do a more controlled testing though, but the above are my informal observations… I wonder if my MC300 is also failing…
My MC3000 is the single-fan version. Is yours the dual-fan version already?

In bay #1, not charging at all but mAh keeps going higher. Voltage doesn't move as tested with dmm and giving false reading with mAh. Sometimes voltage starts going in reverse on the screen too. Crossed tested on other slots with several batteries and no problem, just bay #1. Bay #4 has not fully failed yet but almost. It's giving ridiculous IR readings and when inserting a 3.6V drained battery, often it will right away jump to 4.1V reading. Slowly going screwy like bay-1 did and I need to keep an eye on it to make sure it's working right when I can get it to.

Your IR readings are still not bad at all, mine were waaay off, I'm talking a 30 IR battery displaying 358 IR and taking endless amount of attempts to bring it down before charging if I ever can bring it down. Bay 2 and 4 still doing ok.

Mine is the dual fan mc3000 that I got in Feb of this year from GB.

So have another MC3000 question. Sorry if this has been answered but I couldn’t find it.

So bought it from Amazon. Newer two fan model. It came with FW 1.13 and everything worked fine, including Bluetooth and the Bluetooth LED on the side. After a day I upgraded it to 1.14, and again worked fine. About a day later the Bluetooth LED is now no longer on and no Bluetooth connectivity. I try a power reset, turning Bluetooth Off, then On, and then a reset to factory settings. Still no Bluetooth. So I return it to Amazon and get another. I receive it, and sure enough, Bluetooth LED not on and no Bluetooth. The setting for Bluetooth is On.

Are these things just faulty or am I doing something wrong?

Make sure you don't ALSO have the MC300 hooked up to your computer at the same time. As I recall, this will disable bluetooth.

The PC software does work, but the Bluetooth LED has never been on with this MC3000, even without the PC connection. Not the end-of-the-world but is nice to have.

No clue. I just checked my MC3000 (with two fans). As soon as I open the iPhone app, the blue LED lights up. That means both the MC3000 and the phone app have to be working.

The only thing I can think of - is to install the app on another phone, to see if it's related to the phone. You might try rebooting your phone, just in case the phone's bluetooth module is acting wonky.

Thanks I think you solved it. I could swear that on my previous one the Bluetooth LED stayed on, but maybe not. So when I had brought up the iPhone app, nothing, but it must have been looking for the old charger Bluetooth. I killed the app. then restarted it the app. and sure enough, I get a Bluetooth light and connection. Its weird that there is no pairing security, but it does work now. Thanks.

Yeah, even when I turn off the phone, the Bluetooth LED stays on, so maybe Bluetooth LED means it has found a phone and paired. On the MC3000 side, you need to turn off Bluetooth and back on to clear that. On the phone you need to kill the app. to clear the pairing. Not typical Bluetooth behavior but whatever works I guess.

Anyone had problem that keys stopped working? All of them.

Nope.. I just noticed that my second bay terminates earlier than the others... :(

why cant i save changes made in my windows software cycle from c/d/c to d/c to the mc3000 slots?

I have a multi-cell battery pack from a Shark cordless vacuum cleaner, has 15 or so NiMH cells in series. I want to build a rig to test each cell’s capacity, 4 at a time, non-destructively, by piercing the skin of the pack with needles. The batteries will still all be in a series circuit for this test, however.

So, I am curious if each of the 4 channels in the MC3000 is completely independent, and able to perform this test?

I can't be totally sure as i don't have it at hand right now but i am 99% positive (*) that the 4 channel are NOT independent so you can't test several batteries from the same pack without disconnecting them.

(*) From a designer point of view it would add design and production costs with no real benefit for that kind of charger

Ok i have verified and while each channel use it's own converter for the charge they are not isolated converters and all use the same 12V input so i confirm that trying to charge batteries that are externally connected would not work properly (worst case might be a short on 3/4 of the batteries)

One curiosity of this charger is that if a LiIon battery has been discharged to too low of a voltage, the MC3000 doesn’t want to charge it. What I have to do is connect a charged cell in parallel to the battery sitting in the charger, then start the charge cycle on the MC3000, then I can remove the “jump start battery”.

This is really annoying. Is there an alternate solution, or can somebody recommend a different charger that I can use to “jumpstart” these cells, or basically any high quality charger that will charge a flat battery?