C9000 received and Question about cheap battery.

[fireguy]

Hello, everyone! I'm new to this forum and hope that I've posted this in the correct place.

I just received a Maha MH-C900 this morning. I bought it because of the information on this site. (Thanks!) It is number 0H0DA so I'm assuming it's a pretty current version?

My first thought is that it's quite a bit lighter than I had thought. It looks like a nice, solid charger.

I have an SCH-600F USB-powered charger (http://www.spowerking.com/pro_001.asp) that I like. It's worked well for me, but I wanted something a little more sophisticated to condition batteries and see what capacity they have and to match their capacities. As an aside, does anyone have any thoughts about this charger?

Now for my question - I purchased a dozen cheap NiMH Chinese batteries on eBay several months back. (Forgive me, I was ignorant - I hadn't found this site so I didn't know the errors of my ways.

Anyway, these are 2600 maH batteries branded BlueBaby (in yellow and orange colours, though). In the 600F smart charger, the battery icon would flash meaning it was a bad cell. If I put a battery into a dumb charger for 30 seconds, it would put enough energy into the cell that the 600F would then recognize it. It would fully charge in a couple of minutes, however, so something isn't right. Measuring the voltage with a digital voltmeter, I would get 1.65V. After charging 4 of the batteries, my digital camera would come on, extend the lense and then die. Apparently these batteries aren't that good.

I also tried charging a couple of these batteries in the dumb charger. The charger never did stop charging and the batteries were just slightly cooler than lava.

What do you recommend I try in my spiffy new C9000 to get these batteries working? Should I try a break-in cycle to see what happens? Is there anything that I should watch for?

I appreciate any input that you might have. And thanks for such a great site! I'm certainly no batteryologist, but I've learned a lot in just browsing through here.

 

[Black Rose]

If the batteries are bad and have high internal resistance, which it sounds like they do, the C9000 will not charge them.

 

[45/70]

Welcome to CPF, fireguy!

I'm going to try and not be the bearer of bad news, the best I can.

What I would do, is pick out 4 of your cells in question. If, the C-9000 will accept them, run a discharge @ 100mA on the cells. If they show "DONE" almost immediately, I would charge them up in what ever charger they will work in, then, do the 100mA discharge.

When they're done discharging, run a "BREAK IN" on the C-9000, again, IF, the C-9000 will accept them. Keep in mind that a break in takes about 36-40 hrs.

If they make it this far, note what the final capacity is. If it's anything like what you consider usable, but still pretty low, run another break in on them, It's hard to say what capacity your batteries really are, but it's very unlikely they were ever able to achieve 2600mAh so you'll have to go by your "gut feeling" on this.

If after the first break in, they come up with a final capacity of, say 2000mAh, run a refresh/analyze on them. If the capacity improves, do it again.

On the other hand, you performed a second break in, if they don't seem to have improved significantly (10% or more) or, are even worse, I'd just give up on them.

There are other ways to approach this situation, this is just what I'd do. Good luck!

Dave

 

[fireguy]

Thank you Dave and Black Rose. I'm pleased to be here. :thumbsup:

I was anxious to try out the charger, so I put 2 batteries in on break-in. It accepted them without any problem and after 234 min it's showing 913 maH at 258 ma and 1.43 V.

I did put one of them into slot one after receiving your message. It was recognized immediately, and I set it for 100ma discharge.

Maybe they're going to work after all? I'm curious to know what the capacity is reported, and if I can improve on what it says.

All in all, after just a little bit, I'm very impressed with the C9000. I don't find the extra keystrokes to program each slot a problem. I really like the large display and that's worth a fey extra key presses.

I'll let you know how things work out with these batteries. It will be interesting to see their capacity and if I can get them to work in my camera after all.

I guess it comes down to getting what you pay for. $6 for 12 2700maH NiMH should have told me it was too good to be true. But, in the worst-case scenario I'm not out too much money.

Is the 0H0D0A a fairly recent version? I'm guessing that the 0H means it was manufactured in 2009?

Thanks again!

 

[Black Rose]

The fact that the C9000 accepted those cells for break-in is very good news.

I bought my C9000 last March and it has 0G in the number and is only 5 characters long.

There is a thread here somewhere discussing the number format for the C9000.

 

[Mr Happy]

I was anxious to try out the charger, so I put 2 batteries in on break-in. It accepted them without any problem and after 234 min it's showing 913 maH at 258 ma and 1.43 V.

Sounds like you are doing fine. One thing to note, possibly, for next time is that when you have a cell that might be in bad condition you could enter a lower capacity, like 2000 mAh, for the break-in charge rather than the label capacity. Just until you have an idea what the real capacity is.

 

[fireguy]

Thanks for your replies.

You are correct, Black Rose, my ate code does have only 5 numbers. I will search for that thread.

The two batteries that are on break-in are still going, but two others - during either discharge or charge - would only show charged or discharge capacity of less than 80 maH. I'll try a break-in cycle on these to see if that has any affect, but these may just be bad cells after all. Bad, bad cells!