charging eneloops

I have a diddy borg, and as suggested in the build instructions, I am using a bunch of eneloop nimh batteries in the supplied battery holder. The annoying part of this is that every time the battery need to be charged, I need to pull them all out individually and load them into several chargers. Is there some kind of external nimh charger I could purchase that would hook directly to the entire battery pack at once?

piborg's picture

I agree it is a bit of a pain, I think there is a potential solution.

A charger like this one is intended for the sealed NiMH battery packs:
http://www.mpa-airsoft.com/bulldog-battery-charger-for-batteries-used-in...
It says it is capable of a 10 cell, 12V pack, so the standard 10x AA pack we provide should be compatible.

You would need to make a connector to attach to the charger directly to the battery pack.

If you are going to use this make sure all of the following are okay:

  1. Ensure the positive and negative connections are the correct way around
  2. Only use identical type and brand batteries in the pack, mixing them can be dangerous
  3. Make sure all of the batteries are of the same capacity
  4. Charge and discharge all of the batteries together, do not mix charged and discharged batteries
  5. Test charging the pack outside on its own at least once, make sure the batteries are all okay after charging
  6. If any of the batteries become misshapen, discoloured, or leak stop using them and the charger immediately

I just received a Bulldog charger as a Christmas present (it was on my list to Santa!). The instructions say it should not be used on battery packs of over 5000mah. My cells are 1200mah each, if my arithmetic is correct then I will have 12000mah in total (10 cells). I don't want to try it without asking if my logic is correct and it is a simple addition when 10 cells are in series. As you recommended this charger I wondered how you got round this problem?
Edit. Sorry, should have googled before posting. The capacity for batteries in series remains the same as for one battery.

thanks! I got one of those. Works great!

gt213296@gmail.com's picture

Do you have a solution to read current and voltage of the battery pack , nice to be able to monitor consumption

I haven't yet tried it, but I'm planning on using this MCP3008 chip to do just that.

https://learn.adafruit.com/reading-a-analog-in-and-controlling-audio-vol...

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