Hi: I have just bought a pair of heated gloves that take a 12 volt 2600 mAh rechargeable battery in each glove and I would like to check the voltages with my volt meter. Can I touch the meter’s neg(-) probe to the ouside of the shiny part on the male connector part of the batttery and the positive(+) probe to the inside of the male connector that has two shiny contacts without blowing or shorting out the batteries?.
The batteries come with a wal-wart type of charger with output of 12.6 volt 1000mA. Thanks, Hot Brass
This is a pic of the connector:
You image doesn’t show in your post.
This is the same connector that plugs into the gloves? Should be fine to check the voltage there.
Link to the gloves?
Thanks,but not sure what happened with the picture where it ended up?? That is correct,that male part in the pic plugs into female part of the glove(s).So I will be fine to touch the meter’s probe(-) to the outside shiny portion and the probe(+) touching the inner contacts to get a reading and what should the voltage be at a full charge?
This is the link to the gloves:http://www.powerinmotion.ca/Products/HeatedWear/Heated_Gloves_Calgary_Toronto_Vancouver_Canada.aspxThanks,Hot Brass
Inside is “positive” outside is “negative” total voltage is 12.6v fully charged.
Thanks….I managed to check the voltages with no trouble… but now I am worried about how low I can run this 3 cell battery pack before I do damage to the cells. What is the lowest combined voltage I can let them go down to before I recharge….9.75volts? Thanks,HB
9 volts generally, go below that and the cells may be damaged, and that does depend on what cells are in the pack, you might have cells that will go down to 2.5v before they’er damaged instead of 2.8v.
Thanks……9 volts it is. Seems that the liners and battery packs are warranteed for one year. I wonder if the packs would run flat if I left the liners on “HIGH”,or they(batts or liners) have some sort of cut-off when the pack gets to a certain level?? I don’t know and the place I bought them from won’t reply to my e-mails I send!!! Thanks,HB
Just for kicks,I went out today for a walk and I took one of the battery packs I had ready to be charged before I walked,but had to use it in a hurry,which last time I checked was around 10 volts. I turned the gloves on and cycled over to MED and after maybe 15 minutes,I noticed the glove liners were cold,so I checked the connection to the gloves and all was good,so I just assumed that the battery had some kind of low voltage discharge protection and it had kicked in and shut the power off?
After I got home I checked the battery pack with my DVM and there was 0.0volts….nothing!. I plugged the battery into the wal wart charger and checked again after about 5 minutes to see if it was holding a charge and at that time it had put in 1.0 volt……so at least it was taking a charge?!
I have had it on charge now for some time and the batt is cool and the charger is warm.
I thought that 18650 batteries should not be discharged lower than around 3.0 volts, or the batt would be useless?!What happened in my case where it went from 10.0 volts to zero in about 15 minutes? Thanks,HB
Battery pack just came off the charger at 12.3 volts. I guess it’s o.k.? Before the charge it was zero volts. HB
It does sound like the pack has an overvoltage protection circuit built in. The pack can say it has 10v, but that would be a combined standing idle charge and the batts can be uneven in the charge, As soon as the pack is plugged in and this is just an
E.g, each battery will draw About 0.2 volts say, taking the pack down to 9.4 volts total just from the circuitry in the gloves, and then once it starts to use the volts and amps together to heat the gloves that 0.4 of a volt will dissapear Very quickly and the overvoltage protection kicks in turning off all power until put on charge. Or there’s a short in the pack or there’s one in the gloves or the batteries are craptastic specials and just can’t hold a charge anymore because they’ve been self discharged to low while standing, or the batteries themselfs have pcb protection board and they or just one switchced off because it was below it’s minimum voltage. But if i was you, i’d want to open the pack and see if there was a pcb to stop the pack from going over and below a voltage minimum, just so you know what is doing what ?.
Not sure I follow?….if it has a low voltage protection,why did the battery read 0 voltage. If it had low voltage protection,there should have been at least something (some voltage) when I checked with my meter,shouldn’t it? The 10.0 volts I stated before I used the pack was it just sitting on my shelf waiting to be charged,but I used it knowing that it wasn’t fully charged up,but thought I had enough “juice”for a small walk. After charging it reads 12.3 volts….is that not good enough or close enough to a full charge? Thanks,HB
Rechargeable batteries do not have linear discharge. For a 3-cell lipo starting @ 10v > it was damn near dead when you went out the door. IMO 10v is as lower than you should EVER take it. You would like to leave 20% capacity remaining for optimal life. That translates into 3.6-3.7v/cell > 10.8-11.1v for a 3S pack.
Take a look at this discharge graph.
Notice the hard drop at 11v. After that there is little left in the battery. You are pushing hard to get little, and incurring damage that accumulates over time.
I have no idea if that pack has a low discharge cut-off. It should, but that doesn’t mean anything.
Thanks! Sure drops off! HB
I watched the video. There’s pitiful little data on the site besides marketing. It appears to be a 3x18650 battery with 2600mA in it. Full charge should be 12.6v. Look at that graph again and you’ll see that 12.3v isn’t a big loss. The charger is probable pretty basic. A bit less top end voltage will actually contribute to a longer life. I try to keep lithium cells below 4.0v/cell if hanging around but expecting future use. If being “stored’ I pull them down to 3.85v/cell, put them in a ziplock, and put them in the fridge. This effectively ‘hibernates’ them. Lithium does not like extended storage at full voltage, especially at higher temps. I would suggest that when you are putting them away for spring.
Note-I fly RC planes and we use high performance lithium polymer batteries. The above is VERY true for that chemistry. It is less true for the ‘hard can’ lithium being used for lights (and these gloves) but it still IS true.
They don’t give any run times. Be aware that likely the run time at half power will be much longer than at high, maybe 4x longer. Low could be 6-10x longer than high.
If they don’t provide guidance in their lit then the only way you have of checking it out is a run test with a timer. Best not to use them unless you have at least 12v to start unless it’s a short walk. That graph will give you an idea of capacity vs. voltage.
Thanks! Not much support on that site for sure!! I have sent numerous e-mails asking questions about run-times,etc….no replies!! I used to run 3s,6s lipo’s in my Mugen Eco 4 wheel drive r.c. car and had balancing charger(s) for those batts. HB
The wires in those gloves break too soon.
Speaking as someone who has bought to many of them. Go for heated muffs instead,
Experience speaking here...
I did some checking and found out that these 18650 sized batteries in this 3-cell pack could be possibly a LiFePO4 type 3.2 nominal voltage, as opposed to the 3.7 Li-ion I was originally thinking they were. Can’t find any LiFePO4 18650 batteries that have this much capacity(2600mAh)?? So not sure what I have!!
I tried to get some electrical specs on this pack from a dealer that sells these elecric glove liners and they told me ” The official cut off voltage is 8v. The indivudual cell cut off is 2.8v, so 2.8v x 3 = 8.4v.” So….what are they??
The wall-wart charger that came with the packs have an output of 12.6 volts,1000ma. All it says on the packs is 12 volt 2600 mAh Lithium….doesn’t say Li-ion,LiFePO4 or anything to tell me what size batteries they are,but they seem to have the physical size of a 18650. Guess I am gonna have to remove the wrapping and find out!? Thanks,HB