There seems to be 2 slightly different versions. The lanyard hole is on the top vs side and the led display is circular vs rectangular. The supplied cable is shorter vs longer and packaging flat vs sloping. I got 4 black, 3 blue + 1 white. Just wondering if they give the full 1.2Ah and charge at 0.7A?
there should be a warning triangle on the bottom of the case just poke your screwdriver next to that triangle and it will pop open with no clips in the way.
Can you take a look at the build of some of the cheaper 18650 battery chargers please, I've had one from Amazon working great till yesterday when it filled my front room with a bright blue flash and bang. My fuse box circuit breaker for the plugs shut off and I had that lovely burned silicone smell..
thats a shame as they lend themselves to being charged very quickly even though the power density is terrible. I could just imagine one of those USB power banks with a shed load of super capacitors. charge up in seconds (which is handy in today's life style). then use the power bank to charge say a phone when out and about
I've had that happen...I hooked a camera battery up to my multimeter, and it read 0.00 on the volts, even on the Battery setting at 9v setting. For some reason, I can't use the 1.5v setting on my meter's Battery function.
I've got an industrial Fluke, but the little meter is quite handy because you don't need to swap leads for the current ranges and I keep a set of leads with croc-clips on it. It's OK for basic tests, but not a serious meter.
Any idea of what could cause a failure mode on single chip version, where the chip on the board gets hot at 91°c, and stays there without anything connected?
+bigclivedotcom if only I could find the chip number online and get another one, do you have any url's, or should I quit while I haven't burned down my house!
+bridgendesar It's generally cheaper to buy a complete new power bank than it is to source one of the chips. They only seem to be available to the power bank manufacturers. check for short circuits like blobs of solder between pads, but it's still probably cheaper and easier just to get another unit.
does it have short circuit protection?? both of two power bank?? that you showed in this video?? i was thinking if im going to replace it with 3 old smartphone battery in parallel connections which is in good condition im just gonna remove the PCB of the batteries and put it in that power bank.do you think is it safe if im going to make it??? i hope you reply. thanks
It all depends on the capacity of your phones internal battery. It won't be a direct mAh ratio since the power bank has to step the voltage up before it gets stepped down again by the phone making the charging less efficient. But it's certainly going to be a useful charge. The internal cell is rated around 2200mAh so that should give a rough idea of how many full charges (or how much of a single charge) you could get before it needed recharged.
ive been trying to find better schematics for this one its seems like in your video is not complicated so im wondering if you posted it or you have a linked to that one
I have a high quality Powerbank of this type, and I always wondered how it detects if theres something connected, as theres no switch. Does that mean its always on?
drkastenbrot The simple ones just always keep 5V on the output and kick-in when a load is applied. The more sophisticated ones just pulse the output regularly with 5V to see if a load is there yet.
I have the same style power bank as the second one. If I wired in ANOTHER 18650 in parallel would it still work and/or last longer? I have at least a dozen of 18650's from laptop power packs and am wondering; Can I wire them ALL up in parallel to make a MASSIVE usb power bank using the circuit board from the power bank? Sorry I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to electronics like this.
+TheFlacker99 (Flak) theoretically yes, but I';d recommend getting them all near the same voltage first to avoid high current flow between cells in a different charge state.
+TheFlacker99 (Flak) The downside with Li-ion in parallel is if one fails, it will likely take all the others with it, as they will all get discharged too low. You can get cheap power banks that take several cells, and these may have balancing circuits like in a laptop battery that keep the cells safer. Julian Ilett has reviewed some of these.
Using it doesn't increase the risk so much. And the charger will be timid as it's expecting only one cell so that's safe too. just take care not to stab any of the cells, or short them out, and you'll be safe :) I rewatched a couple of Julian Ilett's reviews, and those cheap multi-cell powerbanks don't have any special precautions either.
Hello there., i got a question :) I bought one of these with 5300mah but power is way down ofc.., not even close to 5300.. My question,. can I use this charger (obviously ment for 1 battery) to serial charge 4x18650 batteries., cause i have 4 spare ones., and they are kinda going to waste.. Or parallel for that matter :)
It's quite common for the chargers to use a common charge board for different arrays of cells wired in parallel, but initially it might be worth charging them one at a time so they all end up at a similar charge level. If you connected a group of cells in parallel with different levels of charge then quite high current could flow between them as they attempted to equalise voltages.
Those single cell Charger's here in California where i live we call them lipstick charger's.anyway here the market is flooded with chargers either name brand or bootleg ones all from china over the years I opened a lot of them and they have different compents
Do you know any 2 cell kits/boards? I've bought two 3400mAh Panasonic accu 18650 cells, but I believe the board in the accu bank I wanted to put them in has died.
The usual Chinese suppliers on ebay and their own sites sell the multi-cell power bank kits. Here's a typical unit from an ebay seller:- www.ebay.co.uk/itm/191171111160 I don't see the battery contacts in the picture associated with that power-bank, so I'm not sure if it's designed for soldered-in tagged cells. But if you do a search for "diy 18650 power bank" on ebay you'll see there are quite a few options.
Okay, so I just found this sheet on my Li-ion cells, it appears that if I charge them in the freezer and discharge them at 40 degrees, I get more efficient battery's? This must be tested :P
I am using this chip/circuit to charge a laptop battery (that stopped charging) I discovered it gets VERY HOT but is self limiting? It has no fuse. I am manually charging one of the three batteries ( 3 X 4V= 12) at a time as I think the relative grounds on three simultaneous charging might fight/SC each other. Over 50 degrees Celsius with my bodge temperature gauge probe
bigclive, do you know if anyone is selling a huge capacity USB power bank with super capacitors ? just thinking these things could be charged very quickly. the only downside is super capacitors have terrible power density
+bigclivedotcom no its not you know why??? capacitor is like filtered that generate joules and that joules called watts that watts is current that may do fast charge but to make it do charge much better may do ad little more farad than v of the cap so it will tweak much faster be carefull capacitor may harm your device if you don't add inductor and transistor to make it much filtered filtering by transistor it will much useful to be handle and much less do ESD to your phone promise before you to brag me I do it in my own and I do destroy my mp3 ones to show it to my self how be safe or degarouse is cap in phones and It so.
Perfect video person for what I wanted to ask. :)) Can you guide me? I know that the up scaling reduces the current standby. I wanted to bypass the up scaling 5v, and convert the output into 3.7v, so that I can use it to light a bulb for hours. Can you tell me what should I add or remove in this circuit?
The chip in the power supply is really designed for the standard 5V USB voltage. Other than connecting your light directly to the internal battery terminals I'm not sure if you can really adapt it to a lower voltage. If running an LED lamp unattended or for long enough to drain the cell to it's lower safe voltage you may be best using protected cells.
bigclivedotcom Thank you for writing, :)) Oh yes... I am using Sony vaio cells. (you are saying these cells will auto shut when the safe low voltage is reached?) Need of low power auto cutoff and full charge cutoff, is the reason I want to the tiny chip circuit from the power bank similar to in this video. So that when I leave it plugged for hours, the circuit might cut off the output?(assuming this by default) ... that's why wanted to convert the same output into 3.7v, so that I get benefit of long running energy as well as battery protection. I tried experimenting. When I used the 3.7v cell directly with LED, it gave me 6 times more running time, than using the 5v output of the power bank.
Kketansa Art If you're scavenging cells from a battery pack then they will not have protection. You need cells that are specifically marked as protected cells. These cells disconnect the charging supply when the voltage exceeds the safe charging threshold (although you can't leave them charging continually) and also disconnect the output when the voltage falls to about 3V to protect the cell. The smaller USB power banks do not always properly disconnect the cell at the lower threshold.
Kketansa Art Your longer LED running time was probably down to the difference in current running at 3.6V instead of 5V. Are you using a suitable resistor or other current limiter with your LEDs?
oh is it so...? then I think I need a low voltage cutoff circuit. May be there is something simple that I can compose with few diodes and registers.... Yes longer LED time was running at 3.7v directly from the cell. 5v upscale reduces the run drastically. I am using 2.2ohm1/2watt resistor as current limiter, and 1ohm 1/2watt resister for brighter light. The 2.2ohm gives more running time here.
