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Subject: 
Re: Charging batteries
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Tue, 13 Oct 1998 17:39:12 GMT
Viewed: 
4664 times
  
Radio Shack has a quick charger that does AA and AAA NiMH batteries, I think
it was about $25.00.  The AAA cells I bought were $10.00/pr.

Rob Trainer
btrainer@home.com
rtrainer@csti-md.com

Alex Wetmore wrote in message <908291583.842286@phred>...
> Eric Brok wrote in message ...
> > Our institution (a school) considers to purchase two Mindstorms sets for
> > students to work with. I'm looking for the best way to deal with batteries
> > in such a setting. I have seen some posts mentioning some concerns, but
> > would like to have some more advice, like:
> > - are NiCad the best and/or only rechhargable batteries
> 
> NiMH is also an option.  They are coming down the prices of NiCad (about
> $5/cell right now).  The average NiMH AA cell has a greater capacity then
> the average NiCad cell (1300mah vs about 850mah).
> 
> > - are quick-chargers better or worse; depending on what?
> 
> Quick chargers which make some effort to sense the state of the battery are
> much better then slow dumb chargers or timed quick chargers.  Its hard to
> find these in AA size though.  The only one that I know of is my by Olympus
> for digital cameras.  http://www.necx.com sells it (under digital camera
> accessories).  Its about $50 including 4 AA batteries, so you'd need 3 of
> them for two Mindstorms robots.  It charges 4 batteries in about 2 hours.
> It monitors both cell temp and voltage to determine when to stop charging
> the cells.  This makes the cells last much longer, because they never
> overheat.
> 
> > - do NiCads have a 'memory effect'?
> 
> 
> Memory effect is for the most part a myth.  99% of the damaged NiCad cells
> out there were damaged by overcharging them and causing them to overheat.
> For more information on this subject check out the article on battery
> technology at http://www.sheldonbrown.com/harris (its in the set of • articles
> about bicycle lighting).  This is a bicycle oriented site, but the article
> is short and good reading.
> 
> alex
> 
> 



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Charging batteries
 
Panasonic sells quick-charge high capacity (1100maH) NiCads pretty cheaply. I believe I bought the charger with 4 batteries for less than $20 at Costco, and have bought a few 6packs of AA for less than $15 each ($9-12?) also at Costco. I got them (...) (28 years ago, 21-Oct-98, to lugnet.robotics)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Charging batteries
 
Eric Brok wrote in message ... (...) NiMH is also an option. They are coming down the prices of NiCad (about $5/cell right now). The average NiMH AA cell has a greater capacity then the average NiCad cell (1300mah vs about 850mah). (...) Quick (...) (28 years ago, 13-Oct-98, to lugnet.robotics)

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