[Expo-tech] Drill chargers

[Wookey]

On 2019-07-01 00:43 +0100, Wookey wrote:
> On 2019-06-30 13:39 +0100, Wookey wrote:

> I'll spend the rest of today trying to fix the chargers we've got, but                  > I don't rate my chances very high,

OK. I've fixed one :-) So that should be one makita, 2 DIY chargers.

I have 11 DIY packs and 5 makita packs but only 3 charge on makita
charger - other two need an accucell6 or propower RC charger. And
there are 2(?) packs that went to training. Those may be
makita-charger packs?

15 batts/5 drills is enough so we probably don't care too much about
the 2 that need an RC charger.

> > An expo accucell6 (in the UK so we have a fighting change of getting
> > it by Thursday) is £40. (I got mine for £24 a decade ago!) So I could
> > just buy one of those.
> 
> I did this so we have a decent balance charger that can charge all
> packs. Will need some instructions writing I guess. 

So accucell6 (v2) has arrived, and it's nicer than v1 in various ways
(batt-meter and cell-resistance functions added (and LiHV charging
which we don't care about) and 6A rather than 4A max, physically
smaller, nice metal buttons). However there has also been a firmware
change so one of its fundamentally useful features has gone! There are
still both 'CHARGE' and 'BALANCE CHARGE', but now _both_ need a
balance cable plugged in otherwise they just error out. I have no idea
what they think the distinction between these modes is now. This is
very annoying because it means it will no longer charge makita
original packs.

Not sure what to do about this. Sam your accucell6 is presumably a v1
which will charge anything so if you could take that, perhaps use that
one at top camp and yours at base? Or if you don't need yours for
light charging maybe expo could just use it if need be?

Or I could just send this one back as it doesn't do one of the main
things we wanted it for... Although eventually we'll upgrade all our
batts to 'direct drive' with Tom's forthcoming board and then we don't
care about non-balance charging, and the pack-resistance monitoring is
quite nice.

I have measured all our packs' internal resistance - which might be a
nice thing to track in future.

Anyone else have opinions? 

Wookey
-- 
Principal hats:  Linaro, Debian, Wookware, ARM
http://wookware.org/
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