Battery charging question
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Battery charging question
I have 6 AA NiMH 2500 mAh hooked together and want to make an internal battery with um. Now what precautions should I know about charging NiMH batteries? Can they overcharge? And what voltage should I input to the batteries to charge them? And what about charging while discharging? How should I go about all of this?
nope... can't think of anything I could possibly want to put in my Signature Block...
any battery will overcharge. with nimhs its not so bad, they dont usually explode. of course, its still bad for them. they heat up a lot.
anyways, it dosent matter what voltage you give them, the voltage will fall to the voltage that the pack is at. what matters is the current you allow into them. the higher the voltage the power supply was, the more current will be going into the batteries. you probably want to keep it at less than 1A.
wall adapters are rated for a specific amount of current. so see if you can find something like a 12v 800mA adapter. hook it up, and see what kind of current is going into your batteries, it should be ok.
that said, this kind of charging setup relies entirely on you to know when the batteries are charged and stop the charging. it will not stop automatically; the batteries will overcharge. if you can spare some cash, i think you should just get a generic, all-purpose smart charger from somewhere like www.batteryspace.com
charging while discharging has been discussed here a lot, but nobody has actually implemented it themselves (that i know of). most people just rip a battery out of something else (dvd player) thats already set up to charge while discharing. its not impossible or that hard... go look at some previous threads on it.
anyways, it dosent matter what voltage you give them, the voltage will fall to the voltage that the pack is at. what matters is the current you allow into them. the higher the voltage the power supply was, the more current will be going into the batteries. you probably want to keep it at less than 1A.
wall adapters are rated for a specific amount of current. so see if you can find something like a 12v 800mA adapter. hook it up, and see what kind of current is going into your batteries, it should be ok.
that said, this kind of charging setup relies entirely on you to know when the batteries are charged and stop the charging. it will not stop automatically; the batteries will overcharge. if you can spare some cash, i think you should just get a generic, all-purpose smart charger from somewhere like www.batteryspace.com
charging while discharging has been discussed here a lot, but nobody has actually implemented it themselves (that i know of). most people just rip a battery out of something else (dvd player) thats already set up to charge while discharing. its not impossible or that hard... go look at some previous threads on it.
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