Kurt_Woloch
Enlightened
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2014
- Messages
- 290
I ran into a strange problem today with one of my chargers...
I have a Tronic charger which I bought at Lidl on April 2nd, 2012 for € 8,99. It's a TLG 500 B1 which has no display, only 6 LED's for showing the status of the 4 AAA/AA/C/D slots and the 2 9V slots.
Today, like every weekend, I put in the Eneloops of my portable cassette player and it started discharging them as it always does for a while before fully charging them. However, when I came back a few minutes later, I found the LED's on the 4 AAA/AA/C/D slots rapidly flickering red. With rapidly I mean much faster than the rate they normally flash at if they flash. This is clearly erratic behavior because normally the two LED's above the battery inserted are supposed to change between red and green as long as the battery in that slot is being discharged, then change to a solid red as long as it's charging, and then change to a solid green (unless something went wrong). The LED's above the unoccupied slots are supposed to stay dark. However, now all 4 LEDs flickered rapidly, even those above unoccupied slots. Sometimes the right 2 went out and then came on again, and when I took out the batteries, the LED's sometimes started to flicker green instead of red.
I tried to reset the charger by pulling out the plug and reinserting it, but it only starts to rapidly flicker its LED's again.
Has anybody experienced this behavior before? I guess this charger can't be repaired, can it? It must have survived about 500 cells being charged on it (mostly in pairs, so that's 250 cycles of a pair).
I still have two other chargers which I don't like that much... one is a slightly bigger Tronic which charges at double the rate, but always discharges the cells COMPLETELY before recharging them, and one of its four slots is broken in that it doesn't discharge and so never gets into the state where the battery would be ready for charging. The other one is a HAMA charger which is completely dumb, that is, it charges at a fixed current and never stops no matter how full the battery is.
I have a Tronic charger which I bought at Lidl on April 2nd, 2012 for € 8,99. It's a TLG 500 B1 which has no display, only 6 LED's for showing the status of the 4 AAA/AA/C/D slots and the 2 9V slots.
Today, like every weekend, I put in the Eneloops of my portable cassette player and it started discharging them as it always does for a while before fully charging them. However, when I came back a few minutes later, I found the LED's on the 4 AAA/AA/C/D slots rapidly flickering red. With rapidly I mean much faster than the rate they normally flash at if they flash. This is clearly erratic behavior because normally the two LED's above the battery inserted are supposed to change between red and green as long as the battery in that slot is being discharged, then change to a solid red as long as it's charging, and then change to a solid green (unless something went wrong). The LED's above the unoccupied slots are supposed to stay dark. However, now all 4 LEDs flickered rapidly, even those above unoccupied slots. Sometimes the right 2 went out and then came on again, and when I took out the batteries, the LED's sometimes started to flicker green instead of red.
I tried to reset the charger by pulling out the plug and reinserting it, but it only starts to rapidly flicker its LED's again.
Has anybody experienced this behavior before? I guess this charger can't be repaired, can it? It must have survived about 500 cells being charged on it (mostly in pairs, so that's 250 cycles of a pair).
I still have two other chargers which I don't like that much... one is a slightly bigger Tronic which charges at double the rate, but always discharges the cells COMPLETELY before recharging them, and one of its four slots is broken in that it doesn't discharge and so never gets into the state where the battery would be ready for charging. The other one is a HAMA charger which is completely dumb, that is, it charges at a fixed current and never stops no matter how full the battery is.
