Test/Review of Charger SkyRC MC3000

What a masterpiece, the review itself, I mean! And In fact I liked your linked "Battery charging NiMh" article even more, very informative and thorough.

Now waiting for the charger to be available for a good price in Europe. Unfortunately I fear that could take a while.

Stanley from hkequipment told me that the next batch from skyrc will be delivered mid january 2016
but then the low price will raise to 110 to 120 USD :frowning:

If you hold an AM radio near the power supply, do you get noise?
How far away do you have to take the radio before you’re out of range of the noise?

I’m in the US, and I’m a ham radio operator, so tracking down noise sources is routine (and it’s not uncommon for serious noise hunters to find sources that radiate over several miles from ordinary household electrical equipment that’s badly made).

So any more info would be welcome.

Is there any way to identify a mislabeled power supply like the one you got (with the CE and FCC labels but not the internal electronics)?
(Other than checking for EMI)?

(it would be nice to know that they really do have 2 different labels — I hope they don’t just slap the CE and FCC label on everything, regardless of what’s inside it)

If I bought it right now from Gearbest my price would be $136.50 with tax and fee.

Testing for radio noise around here do not really work, I have way to much electronic stuff running.

If I had a place with less noise around I could have used my spectrum analyzer.

It do look like they just uses the CE label on everything.

Depends, customs do not catch everything!

hkequipment.net still sells for the promotion price of 95.95 …
can order now - but it will be shipped mid jan
HKEQUIPMENT - 照明及戶外用品

I had to order the UK version because US and EU were both out of stock and relisted as pre-sale. Since I have a dedicated 13.8v power supply for all my chargers I won’t be using the included adapter.

I also ordered 2 small fans 4.2cm wide to install the on the back of the charger, pointing to the heatsink. I hope the stock output is 5V and provides enough current to power 2 additional fans. If not I will wire them to the USB output and use a mini relay if necessary. I suspect the heat generated with 1A discharge across all 4 bays will deteriorate the components inside the charger.

USB powered fans sound good… :beer:

The charger is quite good but the price is killing me :smiley:
unstable bluetooth is a let down

Bluetooth is not unstable, but the phone program do not work. Hopefully they will fix the phone program and everybody will be happy

I see
But if it can connected to smart phone can all control from the charger switched to the phone?
Or it can only monitoring the charger?

It can control, it looks like you can define "charge" programs on the phone and execute them on the charger.

HKJ
We are all very lucky someone with your knowledge and expertise will take the time to do so complete a review.
Thanks :exmark:

No surprise to see they falsify CE and UL and FCC labeling.

Sad though.

Just received this charger today, this thing is actually much larger than it looks, see how the tiny the opus is besides it.

I’ve been playing a bit in “Simple” mode and so far it performs as expected. I have set my first mode to charge 4.2v cells at 1.5A with termination current of 10%, this is for all my 3,000-3,500mAh batteries. The Simple UI only takes a couple minutes to learn how to use even without the use of the manual. I’ll use it some more in this mode before jumping into advanced.

But one thing I can’t do is to select the same program for all 4 slots at the same time? Right now I have to select each slot individually and the program for it. (I don’t want to mix different cells in the same charger).

In a program move down to "Save to", press "Enter" and "Arrow up", then hold enter down.

Thanks! that did the trick. :slight_smile:

I also find it interesting that this charger will limit the current to 0.15A for all fully discharged cells until they hit 3.2V undear load, some kind of a “soft charge”, I guess this is to prolong the battery life. For healthy cell this did not take long, from 3.05V to 3.20V only 30mAh were induced to my Sanyo GAs.

I hope in a future FW upgrade the program can be selected for all slot together when all 4 are flashing with either arrow, because with the current 1.2 FW these buttons do nothing.

The Bluetooth function worked fine for me, I find it amusing that it doesn’t require searching and connecting the device to your phone, just turn on bluetooth, open the app and it will connect automatically.

Thanks for the detailed review HKJ. I hope to study the whole review soon.

It took me a while to figure out that “RAM cells” must refer to rechargeable alkaline batteries. Is SkyRC or anyone else selling a RAM cell which would be interesting to us?

In regards to being able to “hide” chemistries: I agree, by itself this feature isn’t very useful. I think that I would like to see something similar though, or maybe it’s already present. I’ll examine your review in detail soon, but what I’d like to see is a way to lock down the charger to a specific charge profile . I’d expect that the PC interface could be used to create the profile and lock down the charger. This would be good for those who like to sell a few custom flashlights as turn-key solutions and not worry when we fall asleep: “Will my customer burn their house down tonight?”.

Several years ago my boss got a medical device destroyed by leaking RAM cells to furnish an opinion.

Kids, don’t use them @home. They might occasionally destroy unattended flashlights.