Battery Charger

By this point we have all we need for a basic charge, and I do actually need to charge some batteries. I can build a simple current regulator with an LM317 and a resistor, which will be good enough for now. No Termination The simplest thing would be just to charge some batteries and log to the computer. There’s a marvellous thing out there called FeedGnuPlot which makes graphing realtime or static data so easy one has to resist the temptation to graph everything. [Read More]

There are lots of ‘smart’ chargers out there. Most of them boast that they can charge your batteries quicker than the competition, and that a ‘smart’ algorithm will somehow prevent packing as much current as possible into a cell in the shortest time from having deleterious effects. Slow chargers are harder to come by: there are the cheap constant-current things you run for a certain amount of time—but if your batteries are not absolutely dead they will overcharge, and probably overheat and explode, as mine did. [Read More]