That’s very odd. I also have a pair of SV2 Chargers. Mine are very consistent in that the termination voltage is right at 4.18 to 4.20.
Are your chargers brand new and this is the first time you’ve ever used them? Or maybe this is the first time you’ve ever checked the termination voltage?
If one or both chargers are that far off in voltage then you may have an issue with the charger and might need to get it replaced. I would try and verify if it’s a issue with the charger or the battery by charging up some other batteries and seeing what they end up at. Also you can wait till the battery is charged up to about 97% to 99% and check the voltage on the charger. The last stage of charging is constant voltage (CV) so it should maintain 4.20 volts as it slowly reduces the amperage. If the charger is putting out less than 4.17v let’s say, then you might have a bad charger.
If you verify that the charger is doing the correct voltage then you might have to worry about the battery. Make sure the terminal connections on the charger and the battery are nice and clean. Sometimes you can get residue from the sticker that interferes with the connection. Once the connections are clean and it still doesn’t want to charge up very close to 4.2 volts, then there could be an issue with excess resistance through the added-on button top. That is a whole other subject though, so let’s wait and see if one of the earlier things I mentioned is the cause.
Neal sent my GT on april 25th, and I have no news since then. I live in France, and I have no idea which transporter is used for my country (DHL ? TNT ? standard post ?). I mailed Neal the day before yesterday to get a tracking number, and got no reply (yet).
Does anybody from France can tell me who the transporter was when they received their GT ?
There’s a whole forum section here on chargers. I’m sure other’s here can make good recommendations too. Personally I picked up the MiBoxer c4-12 a while back, but you should pay attention to the settings on that unit, so it might not be good for a first time charger. I also already had a Thrunite mcc-4 that was part of a bundle with a TN36, so I was pretty much set to charge all 8 at once. The Thrunite is pretty easy to use.
Flashing a driver is basically loading new software into MCU, microprocessor control unit, on the driver. The GT and Q8 both use the Atmel ATTINY85 MCU. This process is quite complicated, to the point that even I haven’t tried it yet. Maybe one day, though.
In a nutshell, you can buy a bunch of parts consisting of a very tiny clamp that attaches to the MCU legs, wires and AVR USB programmer all for under $10 typically. Then you load up the program you want to flash on your Mac or PC and whoosh, its reprogrammed.
Simple, right? It’s actually very technical so you have to put in the time to learn all the details. Here are 2 good videos explaining it from Matt at Adventure Sport Flashlights (on the BLF forum as Vestureofblood).
Part 1
Part 2
There are also threads here on BLF that talks about it and can give you links to the parts you need to buy.
Yes, I finally caught up to the point I can answer Mr. Dirts question now.
If I had to pick one charger that does pretty much everything and is sort of middle priced I would go with the Miboxer C4-12. It’s about $45 on Amazon USA. M4D M4X or Freeme has a coupon that dropped the price to $35 if you order it from China (Banggood). The advantage of Amazon is if you happened to get a defective unit it’s relatively cheap and easy to send it back and get a replacement. Just like with any charger or any product in general, you occasionally get one with a problem, so it’s something to keep in mind.
The C4-12 has about 10 different charge rates to choose from plus it can go up to 3A X 4. So if you want fast charging you can do your 18650’s at 2A and you’re 26650’s at 3A and minimize the amount of time that you have to babysit them.
It will automatically set the charging rate for you if you’re not sure what to choose. You can also set it manually if you want. It monitors the cell temperature as a safety feature. It also tells you how much capacity your battery has if you start the cell voltage at 2.8 or so. It also has a voltmeter so you can see a cell’s voltage as soon as you load it into the slot. This is nice for when you use batteries in series as you can verify they all discharged evenly in the light. My previous chargers didn’t tell you the exact voltage, so I had to use my digital multimeter to verify they were all discharged evenly every time I recharged the batteries. So this saves me that extra step.
If you want to go cheaper and don’t mind 1A x 4 charge rates (takes longer to charge) there are a lot of choices.
There is the very popular 4 slot Liitokala lii-500 charger. I think they are $20 to $25 each.
The Zanflare C4 also does 4 × 1A. It’s about $25 to $30 with coupon code.
The Gyrfalcon all-44 also does 4 x 1A and is about $30-$35.
If you plan to charge 8 cells, you can buy any 2 of the above to charge all 8 at once or get a Gyrfalcon all-88. It does 8 × 1A and is about $40 to $50 with coupon code I think.
I would not go any lower than a 4 slot with 1A each. There are cheaper chargers that do 4 x 0.5A, but nobody wants to sit around for 6 to 8 hours for their batteries to charge.
There are also battery chargers in the $70 to $100 range that are basically just fancier. Those work just fine if you’re okay with the price. The Skyrc MC3000 ($95) is well liked. It even has Bluetooth control that can link to your phone!
Thanks. Great info. I’ll get the hang of this. All I was looking for was a great pistol grip light and cameacross the GT VIDEO and had to have it. So lots of learning to do…
I got in contact with lumintop and told them that any shipments that have not been delivered at this point are lost and they need to reship the orders now.
They will be reshipping most of the lost packages on Friday. If you have a lost shipment Neal said to send him a message to make sure no one is missed. His user name is “Neal” on here.
Thanks for the update. I am assuming this is only for the actual GT lights right? Im guessing all orders for accessories and such are still on the way?
I’m planning to pick up my GT from the post office tomorrow morning. Do I need to run it in with the reflector/glass removed to burn off any excess flux, or is this a non-issue now? I remember reading a post from an earlier lot where initial power-up made some smoke. I’d hate to immediately foul up the new light.
