This is an important point that deserves reflection. When many of us first started we had a 1-2 cells total. Now with these amazing high power lights, we need 4-8 cells per light.
2-3 years ago I never thought I would need more than 5 cells. Now I have 52 just in one bike battery pack.
The longer we can keep them in good shape and extend their life, the better for the environment. The mining of the raw materials does a lot of damage and is not usually a consideration (ahem tesla buyers :person_facepalming: ).
Not to sound like a complete hippy, but we should at least try to be responsible and take good care of our cells so we are not replacing them every year.
Hi Hank & Ragsy. I think Blue has you covered already on spec # 7. 12V-20V compatibility and I think he means input voltage.
That will work well with a 12V solar cell input. Ac to dc wall adapter can have an input range from 120-220VAC for worldwide compatibility.
That’s why I generally charge cells when they get down to ~3.3V instead of waiting until ~2.8V. Also why I usually only charge them up to 4.0V or maybe 4.1V, instead of going all the way to 4.2V. And I don’t quick-charge them. And if a cell is going to be sitting unused (or only slightly used) for a while, I usually drain it to about half full first. These things all extend the cell’s life span in years.
A charger doesn’t really help much with this though… except for chargers built into lights. Those make it a lot more convenient to keep the battery at middle voltages. It’s particularly helpful for multi-cell lights, since married sets are otherwise pretty inconvenient to do partial charges on. So I’m hyped about the charger built into the BLF Lantern.
The kind of charger I’d really like to see BLF make is a circuit which could be integrated into existing lights, to give them the ability to do wireless inductive charging. It should theoretically be possible as long as the host material isn’t ferrous. They’ve been doing this in electric toothbrushes for 25 years… so it’s probably feasible in a flashlight.
Charging to 4.0v or 4.1v certainly helps with numbers of cycles. It might give you 1000 cycles, instead of 500. But at some point, you have to ask, “Am I really going to use this cell 1000 times?” Diminishing returns at some point. I still do it, about half the time, especially if it’s in a light that I don’t use much. Though, that’s probably exactly the wrong way around from what I should be doing.
I’m not so sure about prolonging cell life by keeping them around 50% charged. Yes, you may as well do it if you don’t plan to use the cell for a few months. But, I think it’s a bit of a myth that storing cells at 100% is extremely bad for them. Maybe true in the past, but modern cells seem to hold up well.
I have old laptop cells that are over 10 years old. Samsung 22H cells, and they were always kept fully charged. Original capacity 2200mAh. They still test at an average around 1900mAh. Not great IR, but still good enough for a few amps. I think that breaks the myth of 20% reduction in capacity every year.
The SkyRC MC300 will do all the things you mentioned, fully automated and unattended. If I want to charge a cell to 4.1V at 0.5C rate, I can push one button, come back hours later, and voila. Ditto for storage charge, balancing cells, and so much more. I think people are much more apt to take better care of their batteries if it is easy.
About input power, can we adapt to Quickcharge or power delivery type C port?, they are popular, and maximum of power delivery is 90W, more than enough for us. And using Type C port we can reverse charge our phones or tablets.
Anker atom 30w pd charger is much smaller than 12V 24W adapter.
I have always wondered why someone didn’t just turn one of these
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Into one of these
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Use a simpler open source UI that could be firmware upgraded thru the usb port.
The advanced user could upgrade to a downloadable Pro UI for some advanced features.
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The power would have to be limited quite a bit from the hobby charger to make room for a power supply. A power to size ratio would have to be figured out. Also it be nice to have at least a 3 amp discharge with a single cell instead of the typical 500ma found in most chargers of this type.
This is a great idea Blue, I would like to see 2- 4mm banana plug ports for those batteries that are not cylinder. You could even charge your car battery with it, with the proper banana plug to alligator clip cord. The cost for adding those should be relatively low.
One way to tackle the size vs cooling problem would be to offer a bolt-on external heat-sink as an option. The firmware would default to “muggle mode” and assume no additional heatsink. This makes the base model small and cheap, increasing sales volume.
