Greetings!!! Been off for awhile and CPF is hosed up, cant reset password or send an email due to advertising at the bottom of the screen blocking the Send button.
I have a large quantity of 18650 batteries. Does anyone make a power bank with replaceable cells? Would like to use the cells I have on hand. Anyone building them at home? A few years back, I had Vinhnguyen build me 15 hot lights in Solarforce hosts. Gave them to the cops working for me, and kept cells on hand in a charger so they could swap out as needed. I still have 4 of his builds, fantastic light for the size.
Looking for something big, that could be placed in a plastic ammo can. I have 20 cells, all charged and run through my smart charger, so they are all good and fairly matched…
“Leider ist dieser Artikel an Ihrem Standort derzeit nicht verfügbar.”
Item is not available in your country - AliExpress in my browser is currently defaulting to German.
Can you grab a pic from the listing so I can image search it? I’ve also got a bunch of cells looking to be put to work, the reliability of these devices worries me though…
Get the ones with PD output AND charging. Otherwise it’s a total pain in the ass to charge those up. Takes hours, even days with measly 2A recharging speed.
I don’t recommend to get powerbanks with too many cells in parallel, things could go wrong and one failed cell will cause a catastrophic failure.
I got a few of those 2-cell XTAR charger/banks. PB2C, PB2S, PB&J, etc.
They automagically balance cells when charging/discharging, come in handy when I just need a charge without all the hoopla of an analysing charger like my Opus.
Limited sliders, though, so won’t fit shorty cells like 18350s or even 18500s.
They do fit 21700s, but will only charge a 26650 with the lid off.
I was gonna add, I wouldn’t just throw a bunch of cells in parallel, matched or not. A tenth of a volt difference high/low when adding a cell can result in HUGE currents in/out to equalise everything.
I’d go with the XTAR-type charger that has independent circuitry for each cell. In their case, it has the smarts to balance when charging/discharging, ie, if one’s at 20% and the other’s at 80%, it’ll charge the 20% first to bring them both up to 80% before “sharing” current, and on the flip-side discharge the 80% down to 20% before hitting the actual 20% cell.
I get edgy sticking in 4 parallel cells in my Q8-style lights, and make sure to balance them out “softly” before capping it. Crowbarring all cells together with a thick metal ring is serious business.
“Feb 22 Store” on aliexpress has a few pretty interesting options. I am sure they are just a reseller and have no idea who makes the stuff, but i’ve bought a few things from them, like “jns s20” and “jns s34”, both seem well made and are quite interesting. Though both use 21700.
Do not be too concerned about bad rating this store has - a lot of people buy DIY stuff without appropriate knowledge, break it and leave bad reviews. I kind of feel bad for whoever runs this store, it is totally not deserved, my experience has been very positive. The stuff is not foolproof though - for example no reverse polarity protection…
And while this ones do have balancing, protection and even display per cell voltage whole bunch of cells in series still require cells to be as similar as possible - putting in a bunch of random old ones would not work well.
If you do not want to deal with stuff like this - Xtar PB2SL or clones like vapcell p2 do seem like a good and simple option.
On the other hand - most cheap powerbank kits are quite bad and unsafe. You at least should look for ones which uses cells in parallel because that’s safer when there is no balancing/protection. And there will be no balancing/protection in cheap kits.
Seems like you’re using these as a charger more than powerbank?
I’ve got a Liitokala Lii-MP2, even with real 30Q’s it goes from 98% to 40% in half an hour or something, and my phone (Samsung) barely takes any charge.
Seems to work better on a Google Pixel, but only marginally.
It takes longer to charge the thing than it provides power for- It’s like the bad old days of RC cars when you were a kid, 15min play then 8 hours of charging
