Best to put a resister across the 2 tester leads. 4.7kohm works well. This puts a load on the battery and is a much more reliable way to tell actual health of the battery
This test doesn't show anything except if it is under 2.8 volts it's really bad. They can still measure like he is doing it as good and be bad. As skiwi said, you need to load test a battery.
Anyone that is unaware that a load needs to be applied to properly test button or coin batteries has no business producing videos on the topic of batteries. Half of the population appears to be a bunch of self proclaimed uneducated professionals that put others in harms way.
@@Mottenfest A simple and easy load would be a LED(light emitting diode) light bulb. Locate a cheap little keyring LED light and remove the casing/shell and extract the bulb/diode. The bulb has a positive prong and a negative prong. Most of these single LED bulbs are rated for a single 3v coin battery, or two 3v coin batteries stacked in a series that equates to 6v total. In most situations, a LED light that is meant for 6v will still manage to luminate when exposed to only 3v, just not to the full brightness. The LED bulb does not mark which prong is positive and which prong is negative, so that is up to you to determine, but at least there are only two possible combinations. Take the bulb and place a new/fresh coin battery between the two prongs and pinch the two prongs against the two faces of the coin battery,... if the bulb does not luminate, reverse the battery and do it again. If the coin battery is good, it will have luminated the bulb during one of the two placement combinations. If a coin battery is bad, it will not achieve full brightness, anywhere from a little less bright to very dim. Rarely do I ever test a coin battery that is fully dead resulting in no lumination whatsoever. Ensure you test the LED bulb with a fresh coin battery so you know how bright the LED bulb is supposed to be. Use a standard red, green, or blue LED light. Make sure not to use a purple color "curing", or "sanitizing" LED light, as they can cause damage to your vision when looked at directly. Standard red, green, or blue LED's are not dangerous to look directly at for a brief moment as long as it is held at an arm distance away.
Oh good, you showed the voltage curves! The suck thing about non-alkaline is that it could meter fine, but still be at the end of its life, just right before the cliff.
Best to put a resister across the 2 tester leads. 4.7kohm works well. This puts a load on the battery and is a much more reliable way to tell actual health of the battery,
Thank you for keeping it simple and getting right to the point. A breath of fresh air. Simple, clear, quick and no distractions. Wish more how-to videos would follow your example.
This is a bad advice. Without a load even an empty battery an show well over 2.5 V. Measure with 10kOhm load between terminals. This will show you the real voltage at more nominal current draws (200-300 uA) for a cr2032.
This doesnt mean a battery is good. Some will show 3v under nil load. But the moment you pop it into a device it wont perform bec the voltage will drop. How to measure the MAH on the battery to tell if it has juice left for service life ?
The guy in the video doesn't have to much knowledge about electricity. He just touched the easiest way to explain it. Seeing 3v or above on the meter doesn't mean that the battery is good. At all. To get it right , you have to do the Amp reading , which for 3V new battery shud read around 8.2 mA
No this isn’t good enough, you need a load around 4.7k to test with a volt meter otherwise often the button cell voltage floats up and looks good even though it’s not.
Check out that savvy button flip! Thanks for this! Every other explaination I viewed was way too complicated for my purposes. While I do want to learn how to utilize a multimeter, I just want to know if my buttons are good right now lol. Thanks again!
As MANY others have commented, this is a terrible test method. All you're measuring is the NO-LOAD voltage - it's like the first thing a 12-year-old would do with a new DVM. Think back to your last dead car battery...probably all the dash lights worked, the horn, the radio...but when you tried to crank it over (high load), the lights dimmed and anything else that was on went into brownout from the load. You really should take this down because it's just...wrong. Put up another video showing how to REALLY test, including small loads, if you want to be of service vs. providing disinformation.
I don't know if those batteries are comparable but the difference in discharge time is wild!. Lithium has almost ten times the runtime of the other batteries. Very interesting to see the silver battery. It's practically fully charged, until it's dead.
The guy in the video doesn't have to much knowledge about electricity. He just touched the easiest way to explain it. Seeing 3v or above on the meter doesn't mean that the battery is good. At all. To get it right , you have to do the Amp reading , which for 3V new battery shud read around 8.2 mA
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Excellent & clear video. I still struggle a bit with the settings on the multimeter and of course they all seem to be set up differently. Maybe add more on the setting up of the multimeter at the start i.e. Where the black & red leads are plugged into and why.
You can't just measure batteries outside with a voltage test. Even an empty battery can show 3V. The thing that's important is if the battery can hold that voltage when it's being used (is under load)!
A volt meter test of a lithium large button cell is virtually indeterminate as a good will read 3.0V and a "dead" will read 3.0V. Your examples are extremes and are obvious cases of determinable battery life. Using a glucometer for diabetes will fail to boot, then after warming cell in ones arm-pit for a period of time (70°F upto 85°F+) will give enough thermal warmth for the chemical reaction to produce more current flow. This technique can give you an extra month to purchase another battery. This quick cheat is ditto for bathroom or kitchen food scales where warmer than ambient room temperature (68-72°F) allows for the device to work. User skiwi33 load test is a good idea and will give you a more accurate cell state. (load of 0.6mA using 4.7KΩ resistor) CR2032 cells are rated around 210mAH capacity with Energizer rated higher by cheating current and cut-off voltage down to 2.0V. Their test indicated a 2.9V, 0.19mA load but resulted in an additional 300+ hour extra life span for 225mAH cell. Their chart indicated upto 200mAH capacity smooth sailing and after a rapid decline that would depend on the device voltage and current usage requirement.
I test by putting a 5mm LED in series with the cell battery measuring the current in mA. If above 4mA it’s good, if below like 3.x, I replace it. Very easy to hold probe and touch the cell.
Early in the video, you state a coin battery is considered dead at 2.5 Volts and later 2.0 Volts, similarly two different dead voltages stated for a button battery. Please clarify.
@@amosfeldman9454 The voltage-vs-time curve for a Li battery goes way out to the right without dropping much - but of course there's a point where it drops off...so just the fact that the video shows some cells not at "full voltage" doesn't mean that those that haven't dropped still can provide any useful power. Loading during testing is critical.
You can make a coin battery charger and check the voltage as well, get a wooden peg,at the end drill 2 small holes and use a small nut and bolt and fix to both sides, get a battery connector and fix the live to one nut and bolt, and the black wire to the other side, put your cell battery between the peg with the nut and bolt and will hold in place now you can test the voltage onto the battery connector and you can charge the battery as well by connecting a low volt battery to the battery connectors and you now have a charger as well
Ahh, very, very ingenious Mr. West! Is that Mr. Artimus Gordon holding the camera? May I suggest, playing the most appropriate, theme song in your videos Mr. West? You may find it most appropriate Mr. West! Before I take my leave, may I say, great video, very informative, you are most worthy Mr. West, Robert Conrad would be very proud indeed! Good day, gentlemen!
How important is amperage? I've noticed that new 1.5v batteries put out about 150mA and are dying below 100. I've used amperage for years because I have a mix of regular and NiMH batteries which are normally only 1.2v and are measured in mAh also. When they hold less than 80% of their rated capacity, it's time to recycle.
I had tested my failing CR1632 3V disc before I posted this and it was still just under 3V. When it completely failed I tested the amperage and it was about 30mA. The new one pegged the 150mA limit of my multimeter. The voltage of the new battery was only slightly higher than 3V. So, yes, amperage does matter.
I've tried researching where to recycle batteries but there don't seem to be places that recycle Alkaline batteries any more. Some site state that it's okay to just throw in the trash. I wish there was a better way to recycle Alkaline. It must not be cost effective or safe to do so at this time. I just don't have the knowledge of how the battery works, but you would think we could reuse them for something.
Great instruction but there's one important omission. You didn't state which range to select on the meter and it cannot be read onscreen. But thanks for posting the instructions.
his multimeter is auto range. you set the multimeter in the not smaller voltage setting than the battery you measure. so this red one would be set to the next smallest voltage which is greater than 1.5V or 3V which is: 20 Volt DC: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ts0EVc9vXcs.html always measure with a load on the cell or else it can fool you and show good voltage that would break down with current flowing. use a resistor like 150 ohm. most likely a much bigger resistor like 2.7k is better for the cell to not drain it too much ...
I have an LR44 2 batteries to power a digital hygrometer. Put in July 6 2022. D8gital readout and speed still good. May have lost accuracy. Factory reccomended changing after 9 moths. I did not. As you can see this exceed 640 hrs. So how is this and will voltage affect accuracy of humidity reading?
I have a Fluke 117 multimeter and had to test about 20 CR2450 3.0V coin cells that were in service for over a year. Most were around 2.99V, but some gave strange readings such as 1.65V that gradually climbed beyond 2.0V the longer I held the test probes in place. Have you ever seen this type of behavior from these types of batteries? Why would I see the voltage climb? Testing a new battery the voltage reads 3.03V as soon as I apply the test probes, and the voltage remains constant, so I know the meter is working properly.
@@cbaxter6527 If you mean my fingers were touching the cell, no. The only thing touching the cell were the probes of the multimeter. Coin cells can be tested laying flat, positive side down, as the outer edge is positive with the negative side up. No need to hold the cell.
This rule is not general available for all coin batteries. China batteries are not good capacity (far less mAh than a genuine good quality coin battery of a top brand) but they still keep the voltage. Recently I bought two used Casio DB360 and one of them had a genuine Renata (not a fake Renata) 2025 coin cell batt at 3.02 volts and still can turn on the LED backlight of the watch and the other watch (same model watch) had a Chao Chuang or a Sun King (a bad quality China brand 2025 coin battery) at 3.06 Volts but no LED light on and barely i can hear a beep from that watch. I replace the cheap China battery with a new battery at 3.32 volts and almost dead watch come back to life, LED light on and the beep sount more louder. Because that bad battery who put me in error after i test it with my multimeter and show 3.06 Volts, a erronate conclude almost convinced that watch is damage.
Question. I have a 3v CR2016 battery which when tested on a traditional battery tester with wired leads tests well into the "good" zone. However, when tested on the BT-168 handheld tester which I am sure you are familiar with, the pointer does not move remaining way over to the start of the red or "replace" zone. Why the discrepancy? Also, I tested the battery on a multimeter and got a reading of 2.9 volts. Any ideas?
put a Resistor like R=150 Ohm on it while measuring voltage to see if the voltage drops into the "not good" region..., EDIT: NO i guess for button cells a tiny load like 2.7k Ohm is better
such a good video thank you i was worried my not too old key tracker (galaxy tag) died but testing the battery it turns out its very dead at 0.12v. I've only had it not too many months but it seems the cell they provided was a cheap chinise ones home brand one made by Henlimax.
Nice video ! I have a wireless door bell , the push button works in the house but not in cold weather is there anything I can do to make it work , Ive changed batteries a few times. Thanks
Hi, Thank you for the video. I have (3) stored, never used CR2025. All read 3.0 volts but do not work on a remote control for a digital camera. I thought it was the RC-but find out it was the batteries. Any idea why all read 3+ volts but do not work? thanks in advance for you input!
its because of amperage. this video relies on pure voltage which is not enough, amperage does matter so you need to test the battery under load. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-CZ3PwVtCe1A.html
I tried this with my Harbor Freight VOM, and it said "1", with no decimal point or other numbers. Same thing for an old battery nd a new battery. What does that mean?
This is simply NOT true. Even dead lithium cells will read 3 volts just fine so with the majority of bad coin cells this method is simply not gonna work.
Yet another pointless video showing how NOT to test these types of batteries or any household type with a multimeter !! Even a completely duff battery can show a voltage that might match the batteries true capacity. You should always test a battery under load conditions, absolutely pointless doing it like this video shows.
