Interesting. I got one of those sprinkler timers to top off my Olympic Size Birb Water Park™, 1min a pop for 4× per day. Ran several months and then stopped filling.
Was using PKcell NiMH cells in it. Of course, showed low battery right from the gecko 
but worked great.
So I pop em out to recharge them. Zero. Zilch. Nothing.
Got a dedicated NiMH charger, nothing. Stuck em in my Opus, nothing. Stuck 1 at a time in my LK101 or whatever, nothing. Tf??
Measured the voltage on each… showed “095” that I saw. Angle and dim lighting, couldn’t see the actual decimal point, so no idea if 0.95V or .095V on the 2V range. Probably the latter!!
So had an idea… both the Ope and NiMH charger had 0V when live but no cell in the bay. They must need to sniff an actual voltage from a cell before starting.
The LK, though, showed 4.7somethingV with no cell, so it must apply a weak voltage (slow start?) and count on the cell pulling down that voltage to sniff what type of cell.
So, genius that I am, I figured let me just leave the little beastie in the charger and see if the trickle might pull up the cell’s voltage, enough to get it charging.
And it worked!
It started charging, and after a while, pulled each in turn and stuck them in the Ope for a capacity test.
Rated 1300mAH on the label, and the first round clocked them in at 1044 and 1139. Running a second captest right now.
These little beasties had a bunch of cycles already in other goodies, and with pretty much shorting em dead, I didn’t have high hopes for them. Glad to see they can revive nicely.
