Burned out batteries ... maybe ...

Stuart Lamble said:

I have a NightPro headlight for my bike. I'm happy enough with it -- it
may not light the road as well as I'd like, but it does the job well
enough, by and large, and it should make me visible to oncoming
motorists. (Hah!)

I put the battery on charge this morning; a few minutes ago, I was
rather startled by a few popping noises coming from its general area.
Unplug, check it ... ouch. Hot. Too hot to hold in my bare hand.

I'm suspecting that it may be stuffed, given that I've read that heat is
the enemy of NiMH batteries. Sigh.

My best information *suggests* that the light is a 12 watt job, running
at 4.8 volts. The batteries are a 4 amp hour setup, lasting 1.6 hours on
a full charge (according to the documentation I have). Implication: 2.5
amps.

Granted that the light lights up when I plug the battery into them, but
that I haven't used them for an extended period (read: the commute
home), I have a few questions.

(1) Should I be trusting the batteries to do the job I expect of them?
(2) Does anybody see any problems with me buying four D cell
batteries, linking them in series for the 4.8 volts (D cell NiMH
are 1.2 volts), and thereby getting around 2.8 hours (7AH capacity
in each cell)? (I can do the necessary soldering, assuming I can
get hold of an appropriate plug ... may be easiest to pinch the
plug from the existing battery set, though.)
(3) Any general comments on charging batteries when the penny pinchers
who made them only supply a wall wart (7.5 volts DC output) for
the job?

If I can't trust the batteries, I'm going to have to head home early --
like the next half hour at most -- to get home before it gets dark. The
D cell approach will cost me around $140 all up for the battery holder,
charger, and cells. Thanks for any and all advice. I'll go kick myself
around the room a few times now.

My advice.

Throw out the batteries, they sound like they've had it.
D size dry cells (non-rechargeable) store a lot of power but they can't
deliver the sort of current you need. Nickel type batteries are good for
high currents. So that means you really need to buy new rechargeables.

The golden rule for chargers is to spend as much on the charger as you
did on the batteries. For nickel type batteries (NiCad and NiMh)you
should have a intelligent charger. These look for a peak in voltage
and/or a sudden rise in temperature. The way they work is they measure
the battery voltage every second or so, you can see the amp meter
pulsing because they have to switch off the charger for a fraction of a
second while they take the voltage measurement. So every time it
measures the voltage it compares it to the measurement it took before.
If the new voltage is slightly lower it indicates a full charge. It's
called the Delta Point. Some chargers may give an extra topping charge
or they may go into a trickle charge state. A sudden rise in temperature
also indicates a full charge. In your case though it sounds like the
battery is stuffed.
A common mistake people make when the battery is starting to fail is to
charge it for even longer. This just speeds up the death of the battery
as overcharging is bad for them.

The charger I use is a MW7168. It's just great and is excellent value
for money. I just bought two of them for my night riding buddies because
we always have to cut our rides short because of battery problems. For
about $70 each they are very good value.

Zoom

On 2005-08-23, Stuart Lamble (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:

Quoted message said:

I have a NightPro headlight for my bike. I'm happy enough with it -- it
may not light the road as well as I'd like, but it does the job well
enough, by and large, and it should make me visible to oncoming
motorists. (Hah!)

I put the battery on charge this morning; a few minutes ago, I was
rather startled by a few popping noises coming from its general area.
Unplug, check it ... ouch. Hot. Too hot to hold in my bare hand.

I'm suspecting that it may be stuffed, given that I've read that heat is
the enemy of NiMH batteries. Sigh.

I have NiMH AAs for my old backup light, and at least one cell seemed
to be deteriorating.

So I discharged the light all the way, leaving it on my bed next to
me. I forgot about it for a while, then heard some popping. One of
the cells was reverse biased.

It then became shorted, so I hooked it up to a 20 amp 12v power
supply, and let 'er rip, to get rid of the dendrites. Dendrites gone,
and charged fully instantly 🙂

And it has worked fine ever since, although I did texta in "dodgy", so
I remember which one it is in future.

--
TimC
Beating is one thing .... pounding accompanied by the shakes is a bit
unnerving -- Andrew Comeau in RHOD

Zoom said:

Stuart Lamble said:

I put the battery on charge this morning; a few minutes ago, I was
rather startled by a few popping noises coming from its general area.
Unplug, check it ... ouch. Hot. Too hot to hold in my bare hand.

My advice.

Throw out the batteries, they sound like they've had it.

To be fair, the popping sound was almost certainly from the plastic
sheathing rather than the batteries themselves.

Quoted message said:

D size dry cells (non-rechargeable) store a lot of power but they can't
deliver the sort of current you need. Nickel type batteries are good for
high currents. So that means you really need to buy new rechargeables.

I was planning on that anyway. The D cell NiMH I can find are 7000mAh (7
amp hours) -- that will give me a good 2.8 hours of running time (in
theory, anyway). Granted that I need four in series to give the voltage
I need, but that's no big deal.

Quoted message said:

The golden rule for chargers is to spend as much on the charger as you
did on the batteries. For nickel type batteries (NiCad and NiMh)you
should have a intelligent charger. These look for a peak in voltage
and/or a sudden rise in temperature. The way they work is they measure
the battery voltage every second or so, you can see the amp meter
pulsing because they have to switch off the charger for a fraction of a
second while they take the voltage measurement. So every time it
measures the voltage it compares it to the measurement it took before.

Ahhhhh, sounds very good to me. This is one of the things that concerned
me when I looked at the wall wart that came with the lights -- it
appears to be a stock DC transformer, putting out 7VDC at a particular
current rating (which I can't remember, and I'm too lazy to look up
right now.) My knowledge (which I've barely touched in nearly ten years)
of electrical engineering suggests that this is sub optimal.

Quoted message said:

If the new voltage is slightly lower it indicates a full charge. It's
called the Delta Point. Some chargers may give an extra topping charge
or they may go into a trickle charge state. A sudden rise in temperature
also indicates a full charge. In your case though it sounds like the
battery is stuffed.

*wiggles hand*

Maybe, maybe not. A spare battery set would be good on general
principle, though; 1.6 hours, especially in the middle of winter, may
not be enough to get me to work and back. It takes me about 45 minutes
to get in to work, and that's with more downhill than up.

Quoted message said:

The charger I use is a MW7168. It's just great and is excellent value
for money. I just bought two of them for my night riding buddies because
we always have to cut our rides short because of battery problems. For
about $70 each they are very good value.

Thanks for the advice. Credit card is in hand; I'll make a trip to Radio
Parts tonight, and start work on my D cell based lights. Where's an old
bidon I can put them into to keep them dry ...

--
My Usenet From: address now expires after two weeks. If you email me, and
the mail bounces, try changing the bit before the "@ to usenet".

What a coincidence! My Nightpro Elite just blew out a third charger this morning.

I e-mailed Marwi in the US a few weeks back (no-one distributes them in Australia anymore as far as I know) and haven't heard a damn word from them.

When I bought this bucket of [censored], I thought I'd play it safe and buy it here for warranty purposes. Nada. What a joke.

This just goes to show that there is no reason what so ever to buy any bike related products in Australia. Shop in the US and [censored] the warranty - they do it here anyway.

I'm going to an electronics shop today to see if they can sort it out for me, but I still think it's disgusting that I should have to fork out for a faulty light.

And above all - DON'T BUY MARWI PRODUCTS.

LotteAngryBum

LotteBum said:

What a coincidence! My Nightpro Elite just blew out a third charger this morning.

I e-mailed Marwi in the US a few weeks back (no-one distributes them in Australia anymore as far as I know) and haven't heard a damn word from them.

When I bought this bucket of [censored], I thought I'd play it safe and buy it here for warranty purposes. Nada. What a joke.

This just goes to show that there is no reason what so ever to buy any bike related products in Australia. Shop in the US and [censored] the warranty - they do it here anyway.

I'm going to an electronics shop today to see if they can sort it out for me, but I still think it's disgusting that I should have to fork out for a faulty light.

And above all - DON'T BUY MARWI PRODUCTS.

Surely the shop would deal with that? But you now have no shop.. um.. don't buy products that will no longer be stocked by Aussie shops? Hmm.. so you only need to be a crystal ball reader of adequate accuracy and you are set..

Stick with popular brands (other people you know have them) so at least you can steal (Carl's) batts when you need 'em.. :P

hippy

Hippy wrote:

Surely the shop would deal with that?

They told me to buy another charger. They also told me this when the first charger blew out. And the second. And now again. The shop manager is a good friend of mine and I trust that he would do whatever he could. It's not really his fault anyway.

Stick with popular brands (other people you know have them) so at least you can steal (Carl's) batts when you need 'em.. :P

NightPro is a popular brand.

LotteStillAngryBum

LotteBum said:

They told me to buy another charger. They also told me this when the first charger blew out. And the second. And now again. The shop manager is a good friend of mine and I trust that he would do whatever he could. It's not really his fault anyway.

NightPro is a popular brand.

Don't buy from friends? Sell it on ebay..
If it's rooted, then can't he send it back and get you something else?

I know of "NightPro" - didn't recognise "Marwi" though..

hippy
"ja ja ja ja"

Hippy wrote:

Don't buy from friends?

Like I said, it's not his fault.

Sell it on ebay..

I'm not that dodgy.

If it's rooted, then can't he send it back and get you something else?

There's no distributor in Australia anymore. It's a [censored] joke.

Anyway, I'm going to the cocksmith at lunchtime for them to look at it for me. The guy said the battery might be short circuiting and, thus, [censored] the charger.

GRRR!

Hippy wrote:

"ja ja ja ja"

Nej nej nej nej

LotteBum
Hippy wrote:
Don't buy from friends?
Like I said, it's not his fault.

But he sold you the thing. It's not the checkout chick's fault that my olive t-shirt is pink, but that's not gonna stop me hassling her to swap it..

Sell it on ebay..
I'm not that dodgy.

That's not what I heard..
(just kidding :P)

If it's rooted, then can't he send it back and get you something else?

There's no distributor in Australia anymore. It's a [censored] joke.

Not really. Same thing happened with VistaLite, which I own. Get used to
it with bike lighting it seems..

hippy
- using fuel-soaked rags on a stick from now on..

"LotteBum" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Hippy wrote:

Surely the shop would deal with that?

They told me to buy another charger. They also told me this when the
first charger blew out. And the second. And now again. The shop
manager is a good friend of mine and I trust that he would do whatever
he could. It's not really his fault anyway.

Your warranty should be with the shop you bought it from, NOT who they
bought it from. Trade Practices Act, fit for purposes it was sold, blah
blah - I would be making enquiries at your state's Consumer Affairs dept. to
clarify your position, then warming up the shottie.

Tony F

Tony F wrote:

Your warranty should be with the shop you bought it from, NOT who they
bought it from. Trade Practices Act, fit for purposes it was sold, blah
blah - I would be making enquiries at your state's Consumer Affairs dept. to
clarify your position, then warming up the shottie.

Ben offered to sell me their new light at wholesale - that's a Smart light of some sort, but I previously had one of them are they are S-H-I-T-E (as well). Anyway, I just went to the local CockSmith and they made me feel like a stupid [censored]. I then took the light to the bikeshop and told them that if they can't give me at least a name to call, then they could keep it, burn it, whatever.

Anyway, I'm off bikes. They're [censored] money pits and I am SO over dealing with bigot men, which are all you ever deal with when it comes to retailing of bicycles and related products.

I'm going to cancel the scooter, buy myself a Falcodore (utility of course) or a Prado and do what every other cocksucking Aussie is doing. Either way, [censored] DEALING WITH BIKE [censored].

LotteF*CKINGANGRY

Stuart Lamble said:

Thanks for the advice. Credit card is in hand; I'll make a trip to Radio
Parts tonight, and start work on my D cell based lights. Where's an old
bidon I can put them into to keep them dry ...

I cut the top of an old bidon, wrapped the cells in bubble wrap and
shoved 'em in. Been working like that for about ...uhhmmm.. two years I
think. If you think carefully about the batteries you can work out the
most effective way of stacking them to get them into the bidon. In my
case I need 10 cells so I have them two by five. but you can have three,
four,three for a sort of hex shape. Making your own lights is fun!

Zoom

LotteBum said:

Tony F wrote:

Your warranty should be with the shop you bought it from, NOT who they
bought it from. Trade Practices Act, fit for purposes it was sold, blah
blah - I would be making enquiries at your state's Consumer Affairs dept. to
clarify your position, then warming up the shottie.

Ben offered to sell me their new light at wholesale - that's a Smart light of some sort, but I previously had one of them are they are S-H-I-T-E (as well). Anyway, I just went to the local CockSmith and they made me feel like a stupid [censored]. I then took the light to the bikeshop and told them that if they can't give me at least a name to call, then they could keep it, burn it, whatever.

Anyway, I'm off bikes. They're [censored] money pits and I am SO over dealing with bigot men, which are all you ever deal with when it comes to retailing of bicycles and related products.

I'm going to cancel the scooter, buy myself a Falcodore (utility of course) or a Prado and do what every other cocksucking Aussie is doing. Either way, [censored] DEALING WITH BIKE [censored].

LotteF*CKINGANGRY

You funny when you angry. 🙂

bike lights, yeah, [censored] it is. I have used niteflux 10 watt light, same as this
niteflux
but the 10 watt version. Has worked well, it is cheap. But I have not used it extensively or on a daily basis. More a once a week or something. It is made by an australian crowd and I have a been in contact with them, and they do answer qs.

Unfortunately when you have your skanger car you will still have to deal with scumbag sales men, maninly men. Lovely world we live in. 🙂

Zoom said:

I cut the top of an old bidon, wrapped the cells in bubble wrap and
shoved 'em in. Been working like that for about ...uhhmmm.. two years I
think.

Works for me. I just need to make sure I can get at the cells to stick
them in the charger. Which is why cutting a hole in the top, threading
the cable through, and then sealing the hole with silicon sealant sounds
good to me. 😉

Quoted message said:

If you think carefully about the batteries you can work out the
most effective way of stacking them to get them into the bidon. In my
case I need 10 cells so I have them two by five. but you can have three,
four,three for a sort of hex shape. Making your own lights is fun!

Yup. I could go with eight, twelve, etc. cells to increase the running
time, but I don't see the need at the moment. If it does happen, a small
resistor and an appropriate diode (hm ... do diodes handle currents in
the 2-3 amp range? Would have to check that) in series with each group
will ensure there's no fun cases of good batteries trying to charge up
dud ones. (Originally thought a small resistor would be good enough, but
that only works if the difference in voltage is sufficiently small.)

--
My Usenet From: address now expires after two weeks. If you email me, and
the mail bounces, try changing the bit before the "@ to usenet".

quote='Stuart Lamble'On 2005-08-24 said:

I cut the top of an old bidon, wrapped the cells in bubble wrap and
shoved 'em in. Been working like that for about ...uhhmmm.. two years I
think.

Works for me. I just need to make sure I can get at the cells to stick
them in the charger. Which is why cutting a hole in the top, threading
the cable through, and then sealing the hole with silicon sealant sounds
good to me. 😉

Quoted message said:

If you think carefully about the batteries you can work out the
most effective way of stacking them to get them into the bidon. In my
case I need 10 cells so I have them two by five. but you can have three,
four,three for a sort of hex shape. Making your own lights is fun!

Yup. I could go with eight, twelve, etc. cells to increase the running
time, but I don't see the need at the moment. If it does happen, a small
resistor and an appropriate diode (hm ... do diodes handle currents in
the 2-3 amp range? Would have to check that) in series with each group
will ensure there's no fun cases of good batteries trying to charge up
dud ones. (Originally thought a small resistor would be good enough, but
that only works if the difference in voltage is sufficiently small.)

--
My Usenet From: address now expires after two weeks. If you email me, and
the mail bounces, try changing the bit before the "@ to usenet".[/QUOTE]
Not sure if you want a diode anyway, you loose 0.6 - 0.7 volts over it. That is quite a big loss from a battery perspective.

Claes said:

Stuart Lamble said:

Yup. I could go with eight, twelve, etc. cells to increase the running
time, but I don't see the need at the moment. If it does happen, a
small
resistor and an appropriate diode (hm ... do diodes handle currents in
the 2-3 amp range? Would have to check that) in series with each group
will ensure there's no fun cases of good batteries trying to charge up
dud ones.

Quoted message said:

Not sure if you want a diode anyway, you loose 0.6 - 0.7 volts over it.
That is quite a big loss from a battery perspective.

This is true -- in the situation we're talking about, that's a one
eighth loss. However, I'd prefer that lossage over ruining a good set of
batteries because one set is dud, or because I neglected to charge a set.

Pity you can't get regular rechargeable batteries in .6 volt increments
to compensate for this lossage.

--
My Usenet From: address now expires after two weeks. If you email me, and
the mail bounces, try changing the bit before the "@ to usenet".

Quoted post said:

Pity you can't get regular rechargeable batteries in .6 volt increments
to compensate for this lossage.

Don't be afraid to overvolt. Overvolting is good.
myra-simon.comlights.htmlOpen ↗

slaw said:

Don't be afraid to overvolt. Overvolting is good.
http://www.myra-simon.com/myra/bike/lights.html

Except that most commercial bike lights are already overvolted. I know
the Vistas are, which means the NiteFlux almost definitely are, and I'm
fairly sure the LightPros are as well.

Over-overvolting is a great way to make your expensive little bulb go
*bink*

Dave - whose light has a regulator that'll accept up to around 17V.
Sorry, my helmet light. My current bar light is a 3W Luxeon.