Be careful here. Shutting off the timer works as well as you are confident
about the correct shutoff time. To calculate this, you need to know the
charging current and the capacity of the cells which is still uncharged.
If your cells are near full discharge, this is easy, but if you routinely
recharge cells after partial use or after storage of 1+ week, then it is
very difficult to estimate the necessary recharging. I used a timer for
a few years with my bike lighting and it worked well because I charged each
night after a fairly predictable amount of drain.
For almost all other uses, I strongly recommend shutting off charging on the
basis of voltage (Delta V) or possibly temperature change (smart
charging), not charging time.
Eric Pederson
epederso@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (no "n" in "epederso")
Professional home page:
http://logos.uoregon.edu/uoling/faculty/pederson/pederson.html
Personal home page:
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~epederso/
> Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 08:02:30 -0700
> From: Jim Couch <spknsprkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
...
> it needs it or not. A simple way to avoid [overcharging] is to find out (from
> your owners
> manual) what the max charge time is for your pack, and then plug the charger
> into
> one of those lamp timer units you can get at hardware stores, ect. Set the
> timer
> so that it automatically shuts off after X hours. BTW the time for the 15v
> NiCD
> or NImh MD pack is about 4 hours.
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