Brinyte WT01 APOLLO  PRE-review with important question: IS IT SAVE?

M4D_M4X · 2019-09-25T12:28:51.000Z

Hello my dear friends!

Today I NEED YOUR HELP to derterminate is my Brinyte WT01 Apollo sample has a problem
or if we need to speak with the manufacturer to finetune the charging system.

grab your tools and watch the whole video please!
www.youtube.com/embed/ljziiybUL3o

M4D_M4X · 2019-09-25T12:28:59.000Z

reserved

bmengineer · 2019-09-25T14:16:40.000Z

Hey Martin. I found exactly the same in my review . 0.2A standby, 0.3A on “complete charge”, highest recorded voltage of the cell was 4.27V. Ludicrous that they haven’t fixed it 6 months later. Even if it isn’t technically unsafe at that voltage, it’s terrible practice, and very bad for the cell.

M4D_M4X · 2019-09-25T15:23:08.000Z

ouch - did not find your very good review!

I am glad (somehow) its not just me.

bmengineer · 2019-09-25T15:33:19.000Z

I find this especially bad for a light designed to sit on the charger 24/7. Mine was an early prototype, but yours looks to have production packaging and everything.

M4D_M4X · 2019-09-25T15:46:21.000Z

yeah

mine seems pretty final

SammysHP · 2019-09-25T17:22:51.000Z

This light uses inductive charging. This means the base creates a high frequency electromagnetic field. This alone requires some power (for the control circuit or “driver” of the base and losses in the EM field). The actual power transfer from the base to the light has huge losses as well. That’s one of the reasons for the heat. After the power transfer the flashlight will have something similar to USB, so near 5 V. The charge controller sits in the flashlight head. All in all 380 mA sounds like a reasonable loss just for the power transfer. You haven’t actually checked how the battery is charged.

Regarding the 4.26 V: It’s a bit high and something between 4.18 V and 4.20 V would be better for battery life, but there are several chargers that are not perfectly calibrated (varying resistors) and will charge a bit too much. This is far away from being a risk, it’s a voltage li-ion batteries can handle with the side effect of a bit less lifetime. So as long as the charging circuit cuts off at above 20 mA this should be fine (note, you will still see 380 mA at the input because of the aforementioned losses). The only issue I can see is if the charging circuit uses trickle charging. This might have been done for an emergency backup light that should always be full, but I doubt it. It’s just wrong. Better is restarting charging if the voltage drops below 4.1 V.

So in summary: I assume that there is no issue but power loss because of the inductive charging. But someone with the right equipment (or experience how to hold everything together with the probes in between) should probably measure the actual charging and check if it terminates correctly.

bmengineer · 2019-09-25T17:25:04.000Z

SammysHP:

This light uses inductive charging. This means the base creates a high frequency electromagnetic field. This alone requires some power (for the control circuit or “driver” of the base and losses in the EM field). The actual power transfer from the base to the light has huge losses as well. That’s one of the reasons for the heat. After the power transfer the flashlight will have something similar to USB, so near 5 V. The charge controller sits in the flashlight head. All in all 380 mA sounds like a reasonable loss just for the power transfer. You haven’t actually checked how the battery is charged.

Regarding the 4.26 V: It’s a bit high and something between 4.18 V and 4.20 V would be better for battery life, but there are several chargers that are not perfectly calibrated (varying resistors) and will charge a bit too much. This is far away from being a risk, it’s a voltage li-ion batteries can handle with the side effect of a bit less lifetime. So as long as the charging circuit cuts off at above 20 mA this should be fine (note, you will still see 380 mA at the input because of the aforementioned losses). The only issue I can see is if the charging circuit uses trickle charging. This might have been done for an emergency backup light that should always be full, but I doubt it. It’s just wrong. Better is restarting charging if the voltage drops below 4.1 V.

So in summary: I assume that there is no issue but power loss because of the inductive charging. But someone with the right equipment (or experience how to hold everything together with the probes in between) should probably measure the actual charging and check if it terminates correctly.

How does this explain the 0.1A higher draw on charge completion than when idle?

SammysHP · 2019-09-25T17:42:18.000Z

Power conversion in the receiving coil.