Test/review of Charger Ikea Storhögen 603.306.50

Charger Ikea Storhögen 603.306.50











This is the largest charger from Ikea with space for 12 AA/AAA cells and it do not look like any other charger. It can be place on a bookshelf between books and look a bit like a book or it can be mounted on the wall. To make installation neat there is space inside the charger to keep spare mains wire.











I got the charger in a cardboard box.







The pack included the charger, mains cable, instruction manual and mounting instructions with illustration and in multiple languages (As is common for Ikea).







The mains connection is inside the charger and any extra length mains wire can also be stored inside the charger.







The charger has mounting holes for mounting it on the wall.







The display has background light, but it will only turn on when power is applied or batteries are added/removed, it will not stay on during charge. When the charger is empty it will go into a standby mode and not recognize if batteries are added, to start it up the power must be removed for some time.











The battery will show lines depending on charger state, a empty battery will start with just the outline. During the next many hours the lines will slowly be added when the battery is charged.

There is no animation.











The charger has the typically two level slots used for AA and AAA batteries.















Measurements charger

  • When not powered it will discharge the battery with below 0.03mA

  • If the charger detect an error the battery symbol will have an X above it.

  • Charger will detect charge level in batteries.

  • Charge will restart charging after power loss, or battery insertion.

  • Power consumption when idle is 0.06 watt





This charging looks like the charger is using a timer













Sometimes the charger can termination on -dv/dt, but often it will be slow to terminate or maybe terminated on time (I supposed the nearly 600 minutes is termination on time).



With eneloopPro the maximum time matches what is need to full charge it.



In my test it detected a full battery, but looking at the above curves I doubt it will do that every time.



There is no problem charging 12 batteries, but again some are terminated on time and some on -dv/dt.



M1: 39,2°C, M2: 32,0°C, HS1: 44,2°C
I did this test with the charger closed and placed on a table.



M1: 43,0°C, M2: 41,0°C, M3: 39,6°C, M4: 37,9°C, M5: 36,4°C, M6: 34,8°C, M7: 40,3°C, M8: 38,2°C, M9: 36,7°C, M10: 35,7°C, M11: 34,3°C, M12: 33,3°C, M13: 45,0°C, HS1: 62,9°C
The electronic gets a bit warm and also the cells in the rear slots, this is nothing problematic, but I wonder how warm it would be when placed between books.



The charger needs about 4 second to initialize. It has two charge circuit, each one handling 6 slots. Each circuit charges with 1.6A and with time sharing it means an average current of about 260mA for each slot. The charge speed is not adjusted depending on number of cells.



Here I tried to capture the timesharing, with only 4 channels I could only capture voltage on the four first slots.

Testing with 2830 volt and 4242 volt between mains and low volt side, did not show any safety problems.



Conclusion

The charger works, but due to the low charge current it has trouble with detecting when batteries are full. It is also fairly critical with the batteries, i.e. it will not charge old batteries.

I like that Ikea has tried to make different charger design, but I will only rate it as acceptable due to the termination problems.



Notes

I had some problems testing this charger, it is very critical with the internal resistance of the batteries and my test setup adds some. Before I could test I had to make a new current sense probe with 2.5mOhm instead of my usual 10mOhm and get new batteries.

Here is an explanation on how I did the above charge curves: How do I test a charger

Can you leave NiMH/NiCd cells ‘trickle charging’ in this device after they are fully charged?

I live where we expect a big earthquake any time, and I like to know I have a bunch of fully charged cells awaiting need, rather than needing to set up a charging system and bring cells up to capacity.
(Thus right now the earthquake flashlight stash includes a lot of alkaline and Energizer lithium primary cells, rotated to give the neighborhood kids the ones getting toward being out of date)

I did not really look for that. I could not use my oscilloscope on the charger, because the charge would go into error mode with the resistor I needed to get enough signal.

Looking at the curves it looks like it do some sort of trickle charger (The green spikes after it is finished).

Thanks HKJ! Had my eye on one of these for a while, but I think I’ll give it a miss on the basis of the ‘picky’ charging of old cells.

OK. That’s my biggest question with rechargeables — can I leave cells in a charger and have a lot of them at 100 percent when the earthquake happens.
Because I know I’ll be handing out flashlights to a few dozen neighbors at that point.

Currently I’m expecting I will have to set up a flashlight battery charging system working from solar panels and 12v car batteries, after the dust clears and the sun comes up

Maybe you can get your neighbors to get prepared for themselves. Or for real elderly get a couple cheap aa lights or something. I’ve lived through a real disaster. Literal ground 0 for hurricane Katrina. 40 feet of storm surge and 200+ wind gusts. Bay st Louis ms. New Orleans flooded after the storm was over. But they get all the coverage they were 50 miles from the eye wall. And the worst in human nature comes out when its survival of the fittest. Having light is one thing and great to have. Large candles will burn for days on end. Its fresh water and food that people will kill you for. When everything is destroyed its not so easy to get more food. Even having guns, all it takes is looking out a window, going outside to piss and your done. Known preppers will be the firdt to go for their supplies. There is no cops there is no one to protecr you but you. There is no foresincs going to be collected. We had bodies thrown in debris piles. To much going on to worry about them. No power besides generators if you could get unflooded gas. No running water for weeks on end. The cops are outnumbered 1000:1 i saw people held at gunpoint and shot for gas out of vehichles. Groups of people formed to take supplies from people for themselves. Anyobe tryinf to come in was stopped and the gas tank punctured. We were left for 4 days until the military could make it down the devastation was so much all the bridges collapsed many miles inland and thousands of trees downed. And then when they did they instilled martial law and put a curfew out for us. And tried to take our guns away. And they did. Don’t think it can’t happen to you. Law abiding citizens. They came door to door and slammed people down if they said there was a firearm in the house. They come door to door to search for bodies/survivors. They will spray a orange x on your house to show its been searched with either w number showing the body count or survivors. Or no one home. And took them. There is going to be a lot more serious matters then flashlights if a real quake does hit. I won’t go into graphic details but I’ll leave it at this is best to be prepared. If someone has hungry kids at home and a gun and your known for having supplies. You have a big x on your back. Its best to be prepared in silence. Way off topic but a lot of stuff happened here that the news never covered and never will cover. Take my word as caution don’t admit to having guns ifnyoy want to keep them. They will instill martial law during castrophe and don’t want angry, hungry restless citizens with any kind of weapons. They will come door to door. They will set up roadblocks/checkpoints at bridges and where highways intersect. It turns into a real Nazi style regime. I hope no other Americans ever have to see that

Highly NOT recommended after a big earthquake. Aftershocks start fires, which is a major risk.

I would think ruptured gas lines would cause a lot of fires afterwards. I can see candles veing a issue there. Im just saying from experience light is one of the last things worried about during s real disaster. There will be ways to makr ligjt even if it is dangerous. Hell ive made candles from mop fibers and motor oil in a soda can. I don’t wish the situation on anyone. Its nice to have a lot of lights and batteries. But I’m talking you it was bat S*it here with no food, water or electricity. Like people lost their minds all at once. Most of the sane people didn’t venture out very far. I found some motor oil that wasn’t containmented in some debris. Cleaned all my guns up so they wouldn’t rust from the salt water. And just hoped a looter didn’t come around. Just hunkered down until the military came around. Hid the guns. Lived off can goods we had until they passed out MRE. Once they got established and had a base set up about a week into it. You could go get 2 boxes of MREs depending on your family size. And a couple cases of water a day. It was still over 100 degrees 100% hunidty like southern summers are. I actually think Katrina is part of the reason I hoard something’s. Because I lost everything I owned except what I could fit in a couple backpacks up in a tree.

Yeah, we’ve got an ocean next to us too, and all the airports are expected to be under the high tide line after the next big quake.
Wet landfil turns to liquid mud when shaken thoroughly and stuff sinks and falls over.

I guess we’ll have to rely on the Zeppelin fleet for emergency heavy lifting of emergency aid.

Oh, wait ….

Recommended reading: Earthquake Lessons

Sounds like someone should pull together a comparable piece of teachable experiences from the Katrina experience.