Just by putting the cells in the charger to full-charge it will not tell about its available capacity for discharge in that cell to power up your light. It may register 4.18 to 4.20V, but will quickly collapse when a load is introduced. That is why sometimes some lights will not stay in ‘turbo’ according to spec sheet, but will go down to ‘high’ pre-maturely. If you use the analyzer feature of this charger, you eliminate the guesswork of the real health of your cell. You need not only to charge it fully, but also to to do a discharge test in order to know the cause, as in the case of a light that goes to ‘high’ from ‘turbo’ prematurely, and isolate if the cause is in the cell or in the electronics of the light.
A cell that is already ‘tired’ and can hold maybe a half of its nominal capacity will be exposed in a Discharge test result.
There’s no need to continue asking for this. It’s already been said in this thread: a “good” PSU with lots of amps costs a lot! In my opinion Opus included the lower-current power supply as a cost cutting measure. They need to compete with several other good chargers here, even if those chargers have less features. Other than possibly reducing the life of the power supply, this decision does not adversely affect any features that other chargers share. I seriously doubt the situation will change, and the resolution is simple as we’ve discussed here.
On the subject of whether an accurate charge capacity is necessary: Isn’t charge/discharge capacity delta a way to judge cell quality? If a cell takes many more mAh to charge than it takes to discharge then the chemistry isn’t so good. I’m not sure about this: I am asking.
Have you timed a charge with a healthy 4.35v cell?
A discharge cycle is a use cycle too. So each discharge test is one less life cycle. Im OK with doing them, but not regularly. Accurate charge rates can be a good indication between discharge tests I would assume.
Id be replacing the PSU even if just for mechanical sympathy. It sounds to me like even if not looking for accurate charge figures, the PSU struggles with the 10 amp peaks its subjected to regularly. Its easy enough to buy a 8 or 10amp PSU and be done with it.
Swapping the PSU is definitely the thing to do. Whether a person is worried about the stress (I’m not) or a person wants the best performance, a better PSU is a no brainer.
I don’t worry about charge cycles on my cells. Now that I think about it, I feel pretty validated in my behavior by some of the stuff discussed in the video from this recent thread. That said, I would vastly prefer my charger give me an accurate idea of what I’ve put into the cell when I charge. No reason to have to look at false numbers every time I do a charge!
Do not expect that the BT-C3100 is precise enough to use any of the ideas from that video. Even though they did not specify the precision, the photos of their equipment racks shows some very expensive gear.
Maybe my best equipment can be used for this type of test, I plan to try it later on, but I am not sure if my equipment is good enough. It would be very useful if I could cycle a cell a couple of times and say if it is expected to last for many cycles or not.
You misunderstand me! I know that you can’t use the BT-C3100 (or even professional cyclers) for the type of measurement they discuss in the video. They made that clear early on.
My point was that the video shows how the manufacturer’s stated “number of cycles” a cell can withstand doesn’t mean much. A textbook figure is no better. While it was not the point of the video, they clearly show that many factors must be considered for cell life, the number of cycles has only a little to do with it.
EDIT: Yes, it would be really useful to everyone if you could measure the CE degradation in your reviews! It had not occurred to me that your equipment might be sufficient. I hope that it is! You’ll need to build a temperature controlled box for the cell under test…
So are you for or against having the correct PSU? I’m fine with having cost cutting measures that reduce the price of the product but don’t compromise its basic function and quality. Anything else is an unacceptable compromise. Now I don’t know what consists of a ‘good PSU with lots of amps’, but I’m going to assume that the supplied PSU isn’t one. Moving to a 10a PSU for the manufacturer based in China buying at wholesale quantities should be quite viable.
I would also ‘vastly prefer’ to have the correct numbers every time something comes off charge, and i don’t think that’s a ridiculous request.
I don’t think you understand my point. Think from their perspective. They must compete on three fronts: features (win), performance (sort of tie), and price.
At $40-60, they aren’t really winning any price wars - the best they can hope for is to look like they have a mediocre price for a 1A per bay charger when compared with Efest and Xtar. Increasing the price any further makes this thing a non-starter as a charger, they can’t sell a bunch when they are priced at double the market price for chargers! Cornering the market for analyzers is a losers game. They want to get many charger sales by virtue of having an analyzing charger.
At $40-60 [with the existing low-current PSU] they have a working + accurate discharge mode. Charge figures are not tabulated correctly, but they did not compromise the design of the charger (much) to meet their price goal. Only the PSU is a problem. Therefore anyone who cares can replace the PSU and have all functionality! This is a much better situation than either of the alternatives:
A. Make it more expensive, sell only low quantities, and then give up and focus on other products.
B. Make the charger guts worse than they are in order to be able to provide a better PSU in the same price range.
So this way they get to cater to both crowds:
Those who have enough money to afford an $80 analyzing charger will simply buy the BT-C3100 V2 and buy a PSU for it.
Those who don’t care as much or can’t afford an $80 setup will simply buy the BT-C3100 by itself and make the best of the situation!
gearbest should try to find a better charger and offer it at cost.
they are a pretty good seller.
i think they will try to help us with this.
i think we all agree that the charger is not strong enough.
but we can all work together on this to
make everybody happy with the product
I’m interested to know if there are minor tweaks we could make that would improve things further. Got to be some circuit bending geniuses out there who can reverse engineer the circuit and work out how to get the best out of these units.
For example, HKJ said it’d need a huge capacitor to smooth out the very high drain peaks of current drain to allow it to use the 3A PSU. I wondered if there were other mods that could be done to this unit to help instead? Like instead of a huge cap to completely solve the problem, could you fit a slightly larger one (instead of a HUGE one) to further reduce the problem, but not elimiate it? Would that be enough to allow it to work fine with say a 4A PSU instead? Someone else mentioned having a battery in there to cover the peak demand.
Seems like this unit is really close to being awesome, and it wouldn’t take much to get there. I hope that v3 does that, but equally this deal is on the table now, and so v2 is what is being offered to us at this time.
I’m pretty sure I’m going to plump for one anyway… but equally I don’t want to kick myself for not waiting for v3 (especially if it arrives soon). Knowing that some geniuses could come up with simple cheap tweaks that could improve things would certainly make buying one immediately a safer gamble.
Beware of the long term life of WD40. I’m no expert in these matters, but I’m sure I read somewhere that WD40 isn’t good for this role of long term reliability. It is excellent to clean it up and penetrate into spaces a thicker oil wouldn’t go, but it evaporates and dries up too quick to last as a good long term lubricant (having flushed out the other oil too).
I think therefore the ideal is to use WD40 to free up the sticking fan and to clean it all up, but then to still add a thicker oil afterwards for the longer reliability of the fan once free running.
I’ve never done this myself though, so not sure if it is true…. just passing on what I’ve heard.
In fact, be keen to hear others experiences of WD40 in such roles… as I don’t want to be perpetuating an urban myth!
It dries out leaving no lubrication or protective coat. ie: material will rust if it can (ie: automotive use). Its a great cleaner, seize releaser, but poor long term lubricator. You used to be able to buy it in bulk, not pressurised cans, and you could add oil to it, shake and pump spray. It would then leave a film behind when it dried out.
If you use WD to clean make sure its dry before adding any lubricant. But add lubricant. Maybe some sewing machine oil, fishing reel oil etc. Something light anyway. Maybe get some reel grease in there, but not too much it may make it not spin up?
For WD to make a good lubricant, you would need to spray whatever it is, daily as in before each use.
