Test/review of Charger Brillipower BIC-2

HKJ

Flashaholic
Joined
Mar 26, 2008
Messages
9,715
Location
Copenhagen, Denmark
[size=+3]Charger Brillipower BIC-2[/size]

DSC_9245.jpg


DSC_9246.jpg
DSC_9247.jpg


This is a simple charger that can handle NiMH and LiIon cells and has one charge current.



The charger comes in a cardboard box with some information on the back.

DSC_9242.jpg


The pack contained the charger, a mains cable and a instruction sheet.

DSC_9249.jpg


The charger has mains input and 12V DC input.

DSC_9250.jpg


The user interface is 3 blue leds for each slot, they are animated while charging and all will be steady on when the battery is full.



The charger is supposed to support both 4.2V and 4.35V cells, but there is no way to select charge voltage.

DSC_9251.jpg
DSC_9252.jpg


The charger uses the classical slider construction, it will handle from 34mm to 70.5mm long batteries. This means it will handle nearly all the long batteries.

supportedBatteryTypes.png


supportedBatterySizes.png
DSC_9776.jpg
DSC_9777.jpg
DSC_9778.jpg


DSC_9779.jpg
DSC_9780.jpg
DSC_9781.jpg
DSC_9782.jpg
DSC_9783.jpg
DSC_9784.jpg
DSC_9785.jpg



The charge current is too high for smaller cells.



[size=+2]Measurements on charger[/size]


  • LiIon batteries will be discharged with 1.5mA when power is off.
  • LiIon batteries will be charged with 0.5mA when power is on.
  • NiMH batteries will be discharged with 0.5mA when power is off.
  • Below 0.3 volt the charger will charge with lower current trying to start battery and flash all the blue leds.
  • Below 1.5 volt the charger assumens NiMH batteries.
  • Between 1.5 volt and 2.2 volt the leds are off and the charger is not charging.
  • At 2.2 volt and above the charger assumes LiIon.
  • Power consumption when idle is 0.3 watt.
  • Charger will not restart if battery voltage drops.
  • Charger will restart on battery insertion and power cycling.


[size=+2]Charging LiIon[/size]

Brillipower%20BIC-2%20%28SA18650-33%29%20%231.png


The charge is a CC/CV curve with termination around 100mA

Brillipower%20BIC-2%20%28SA18650-33%29%20%232.png


It is the same on the second channel.

Brillipower%20BIC-2%20%28SA18650-26%29%20%231.png

Brillipower%20BIC-2%20%28PA18650-31%29%20%231.png


Other capacities is handled fine.

Brillipower%20BIC-2%20%28BE18650-26%29%20%231.png


Even a old cell with fairly high internal resistance.

BrilliPower%20BIC-2%20%28AW18350-IMR%29%20%231.png

BrilliPower%20BIC-2%20%28KP14500-08%29%20%231.png


Small cells are charged with too high current, but the charger do fill them.

Brillipower%20BIC-2%20%282xSA18650-33%29.png


With two cells the average current is halved, at 500 minutes cell #2 is full and cell #1 get the full current.

Brillipower%20BIC-2%2012V%20%282xSA1865-33%29.png


The charger needs about 600mA from an external 12V power supply.

Temp4202.png


M1: 36,6°C, M2: 38,7°C, M3: 51,5°C, M4: 53,0°C, HS1: 62,3°C

PowerOnLiIon.png


The charger needs about 2 seconds to start.

ChargingLiIon.png


It has two types of pauses, some fairly short and some longer about every 20 seconds.

ChargingLiIon2.png


The short pauses is used for timesharing, i.e. switching the current to the other cell when there are two cells.




[size=+2]Charging NiMH[/size]

Brillipower%20BIC-2%20%28eneloop%29%20%231.png


This is a voltage termination, but without top-off charge, there is a obvious temperature raise, i.e. the cell is full.

Brillipower%20BIC-2%20%28eneloop%29%20%232.png


This time it uses a -dv/dt termination, but it charges a bit more later on.

Brillipower%20BIC-2%20%28eneloopPro%29%20%231.png


A voltage termination.

Brillipower%20BIC-2%20%28eneloopXX%29%20%231.png


This old cell do not really work anymore. The charger did put some energy into it, before it terminated the charge.

Brillipower%20BIC-2%20%28powerex%29%20%231.png


On this cell a -dv/dt termination is used.

Brillipower%20BIC-2%20%28eneloopAAA%29%20%231.png


The charger current is on the high side for AAA cells, this makes the charging fast.

Brillipower%20BIC-2%20full%20%28eneloop%29%20%231.png


A full cell is detected in about 5 minutes.

Brillipower%20BIC-2%20%282xeneloop%29.png


With two cells the current is reduced and that means problems with termination. The charger could have terminated 30 minutes earlier.

Brillipower%20BIC-2%2012V%20%282xeneloop%29.png


This time the termination time it is slightly better. The charger need about 0.3A when powered from 12V and charging NiMH.

Temp4208.png


M1: 38,6°C, M2: 41,0°C, M3: 47,3°C, M4: 47,3°C, HS1: 58,5°C

PowerOnNiMH.png


About 2.5 seconds to start charging.

ChargingNiMH.png


With NiMH it has the same type of pauses as with LiIon

ChargingNiMH2.png


And it also use timesharing when charging two cells.


Testing the charger with 2830 volt and 4242 volt between mains and low volt side, did not show any safety problems.



[size=+2]Conclusion[/size]

This is a simple charger with a single charger current that can be either used on one cell or time shared between two cells. The current is too high for small cells. The promised 4.35V charging is missing.
Due to the single current the charger is not good at smaller cells.
The charger do a fairly good charge.



[size=+3]Notes[/size]

Here is an explanation on how I did the above charge curves: How do I test a charger
Charge selection table
 
Top