That is fine, if you check the battery with a DMM you will see the voltage is significantly higher, because the battery recovers when the load is removed.
Depending on what LiIon cell you are testing, the minimum varies between 2.5 volt and 3 volt. In my tests I uses 2.8 volt, this is a habit I got from the CBA, that uses this as the default value.
No, they are designed as constant current devices, not constant voltage devices. There voltage regulation is usual very slow, this works fine with batteries, but would not work very well with a led driver.
Yes, that is very important if your charging cells in parallel that they be no more than 0.5V difference. The sudden in rush of current will be greater due to the imbalance of voltage and thus cause damage to cells that can't handle that much charging current.
Not really, series balance charging requires all batteries to be of equal capacity (or else it’ll take years to charge them all), while parallel balance charging only requires similar SOC (easier to achieve, especially if you parellel-charge cells that you use in 1 multi-cell light)
Balancers CAN be inaccurate (especially in cheap B6 knock-offs), parallel charging will ensure that all cells are at SAME voltage and there can't be any inaccuracies (like with balancers)
Ive just recieved my icharger last week. I ordered leads from where Benkie linked to and got magnets of ebay. Just be careful soldering the magnets though as heat kills them. Been playing today with a couple of Flea Bay batteries to get the hang of it. Very impresive. The wiring is not as complicated as it looks once you get your head around it.
Unless your making sure cells are the same voltage its risky parallel charging, you will increase the IR of the batteries that will affect the end voltage of the cells and the amount power the cell can give over time as the cells fight each other with sudden discharging and charging to self balance when you connect them.
If you series balance with a cheap clone charger yes it might be out 0.04 volt out per cell, but there is a good chance in you parallel you still will be out around 0.04 to 0.06 volt due the inaccurate calibration of the main charge leads.
I series balance charge 2 x 2400 2 x 2600 and 2 x 3100 mAh cells all at once with in 0.001 volt and still can charge them a lot faster then a xtar wp 2 charger 2 at a time thats with in 0.03 volt and charge them faster then an imax clone.
It also depends on your charger the cheap clones can be slower to balance charge then the more bigger $$$ chargers, but you still will save time if you charge more then one or two at a time. IMHO lower amp charges in series your batteries will last longer then higher amp charges in parallel some thing Ive notice over years of RC.
I may have changed these settings when I was screwing around with the charger but I didn’t think I went into the NiMH settings. It looks like the default setting for NiMH discharge is .1A and down to .1V, seems to low on both counts. What should these values be? I must have changed them at some point.