If the BAK batteries thing is true, that would be a huge mistake for them since many of its buyers are tech savvy. Just sent them an email asking which exact batteries are inside my unit and the spare battery that’s on the way. It would be really disappointing to know that chinese cells are inside such expensive unit, and I would go all the means necessary for them to refund.
They can’t lie, because even though the battery case is sealed there is a MR30 port that has nothing but a protection PCB in between, so no losses to be claimed.
It does seem that they edited out the information about the batteries but forgot to edit the parts that says 145Wh, I guess because they would have to go through pictures one by one. I don’t want to expect the worse but I’m afraid that was one of the risk of platforms like indiegogo.
Yeah, it’s a shitty move for sure. Especially since it was directly specified to have good quality batteries. The BAKs could of course be alright… but not what we ordered.
If you don’t want to open your battery pack you could just probably discharge the battery directly from the pack via the MR30 connector and thus removing the electronics losses from the process edit: ah you already had this in your previous comment
For reference, from the original Omnicharge I measured 69Wh from the USB-A QC3.0 port at 12V/1A. It has a 73Wh battery (6x Sanyo 18650GA). That comes to an extremely good efficiency of 95. The 90 I mentioned previously was at 5V/1A.
I’m discharging at 12V 2A with QC3.0 trigger on the USB-A port, tomorrow morning I should have the results and update this comment but I know they won’t be any good.
Well… as expected, at 12V 2A discharge rate efficiency increased a bit vs 5V 1A. 75% if the pack was 145Wh, and 87% if it was 125Wh with the chinese cells. Draw your own conclusions!
They answered to my question on indiegogo and I guess they tried to tell Sanyo GAs are being used?
Kinda confirming that they’re not replacing the cells, claims that high performance ones are being used but then never states which exact cells they are?
I guess that only means one thing… MR30 adapter time
Thanks for the test! Seems like it does have the lower capacity cells as 75% efficiency would be quite bad. You could test this by fabricating a cable between the batteries and electronics and measuring power in/out of the thing. Or use a bench PSU. I’m assuming the signal pin is not connected.
What I gather from that bs marketing speak is that they are in fact using the BAK cells. Otherwise they would state it directly what batteries are in there.
The middle signal pin from the battery is throwing some reading but I don’t think it matters for the discharge test, took the battery out and at ~30% charge I’m getting a reading of 21.6V, which I assume means cells in 6S2P config. At fully charged voltage it should be 25.2V, just slightly above what my ZL1100 can handle (24V) but I think it will do just fine. AVHzy CT-2 can handle up to 26V.
My cheap bench PSU is limited to 15V, ironically the omni ultimate itself was probably the best choice for this task.
I’ll solder leads directly to the ZL1100 and perform a slow 1A discharge rate. that will give us some clear answers.
There’s no need to even test the battery pack, they just confirmed chinese cells inside all ultimate units sand spare batteries.
According to Omni they have sold:
230V Ultimates: total of 784 orders
120V Ultimates: total of 1996 orders
Spare Batteries: total of 921 orders
3,701 battery packs, each with 12 cells inside: 44,412 CHINESE CELLS instead of brand name ones we were suppose to receive, they raised more than a million and decided to do the nasty switcheroo on us to save a couple dozen thousands of dollars.
They raised more than a million dollars, and if we consider each chinese cell being $1.5 cheaper that’s only ~$60,000. Heck, even $20 powerbanks have LG F1 inside, which is not a good cell by any means, but at least it’s decent. I’m so terribly disappointed.
Worst part is, I explained the whole situation to indiegogo and all they had to say is to “contact the campaign manager”. The folks over the campaign poge comment section are so busy asking for tracking numbers that they don’t even care about the lemons they’re about to receive.
I guess I’ll have to go to reddit, amazon and youtube then.
Already on it, my comments are all over their indiegogo comment section, some folks there seem to believe whatever lie Omnicharge feeds them and refuses to even look at the evidence. “Perhaps these new cells are indeed better than the previously planned one” :person_facepalming:
So I went ahead and started a thread on reddit, where usually some degree of common sense is found.
I’m just so pissed that what was supposed to be my reliable variable DC power supply, MPPT solar energy storage unit and mobile power bank has the main component wrong. I don’t even use chinese cells on the cheapest of my flashlights, I can’t accept them on a $300 device.
IMO there is simply no reason other than cost cutting, discharge rate was no excuse, the Omni ultimate maxes out at 150W output power which is barely more than 1C.
I don’t see any mention in the manual how to limit the current from the DC output. How is that done? They only mention setting the voltage. I’d like to use the Ultimate to power an LED and limit the current to for example 1A regardless of voltage.
That has been a listed feature since the beginning
Someone mentioned on reddit that if you’re making your own MR30-DC cable for the Ultimate you need to bridge the two negative pins on the MR30 connector (the grouped ones). Not sure if that holds for the battery connection as well.