dsd flashing green/red while charging.

[stevenhyde]

put trustfire 18650 in. plug ps into charger then into wall. lights up red stays that way. everything seems cool.

come back in a little over an hour. light is flashing green/red.

if i put pressure on the battery with my finger it goes to green and stays that way. however if i grab a book and push down on it with that it continues flashing.

i though it turned green when charged and only flashed when it was plugged in with no battery installed.
:shrug:

 

[LuxLuthor]

Hard to be sure of anything with your components. Basically DSD is crap, and there have been many critical comments about Trustfire as well.

 

[LED BriCK]

I have the same issue, except I'm using AW 17670's. Understood that DSD is a cheap charger, but it does have a long history on this board. Any idea what it means?

 

[VidPro]

could it be a protection curcuit on the battery kicking in? battery stops charging, voltage drops, battery starts charging again.
2 cutoff items fighting?
stuff a meter in there and read the voltage, take the battery off and read the voltage. . . . dont suppose you have a meter?

 

[LED BriCK]

I do have a meter, I'll try it. Do you mean check the battery voltage while it's on the charger flashing, then off the charger? What am I looking for?

 

[VidPro]

I do have a meter, I'll try it. Do you mean check the battery voltage while it's on the charger flashing, then off the charger? What am I looking for?

oops sorry being late to respond.
you will see what your looking for as soon as you get the meter on it.

Many cutoff protection curcuits will trigger at 4.20 (+-05)
on the charger: If it starts doing this dance at ~4.2V then it might be battery protection disconnecting the battery. (it being a good thing that the battery is protected)
if the voltage is going nutso like from 4.2-5v then this ALSO might be when the battery protection disconnects (the charger then going to its max or Open voltage)

If the voltage it does the funkey thing at is different, is the charger working? Is the voltage when charging increasing? does the rising voltage eventually stop?
Check by putting the voltage meter on the charger both WHEN the battery is there, and when the battery is off, then with the battery out, set the voltmeter to AC and see if the charger power is "clean" dc. (this test will also show AC if its pulsed dc)

take battery off the charger, check it, was it getting charged ? leave battery Off the charger for a while (say a day) and see if the battery voltage drops quickly (self discharge=not so good battery)

that kinda thing. as long as you dont try and stuff the meter on in the Ammeter mode (amps) across the 2 poles, you can have the meter on as a voltmeter the ENTIRE time the battery is charging, without incurring the wrath of anything, then you get to see the whole process.

 

[Illum]

red/green flashing usually means an open circuit, if it stays this way after shifting from a red light would mean that your battery's PCB has cut off because voltage has reached the threshold of 4.2V

If your charger flashes red/green even when a cell is installed it could mean one of two things:

If protected, your protection PCB is fried
If unprotected, your cell is below 3V and is deemed unsafe to be charged [I dunno for sure because I rarely used unprotected cells, with the exception of 10440s]

 

[VidPro]

Illum what about when the battery is no longer at voltage ?
like a rapid self-discharge occuring while on the charger (bad battery) , would it then go from charged to Charging again, back and forth?

i have a similar charger, it goes green and stays green.
flashes green from red one blip every second when nothing is inserted, led goes blank on polarity reversal <--dont do that.

if i put pressure on the battery with my finger it goes to green and stays that way. <---- that makes me wonder if it isnt "disconnected" somewhere, bad mount solder, there have been instances of that before. untill he put the "auto finger" on it , and it didnt help .

 

[Illum]

I really need to get meself the Pila IBC...been putting that off for so long

Illum what about when the battery is no longer at voltage ?
like a rapid self-discharge occuring while on the charger (bad battery) , would it then go from charged to Charging again, back and forth?

odd...I dunno how that could have been the case though I have had cells that discharged through the DSD when I accidently pulled the power chord out and left the cell in the cradle all day.

if i put pressure on the battery with my finger it goes to green and stays that way. <---- that makes me wonder if it isnt "disconnected" somewhere, bad mount solder, there have been instances of that before. untill he put the "auto finger" on it , and it didnt help .

tried pulling out on the battery springs a bit? from the way the DSD is designed a bad mount solder may be a reason, but I highly doubt it, especially if it was working properly.

Also, was your 17670 flat topped or is there a nipple on the anode side?

 

[Outofit]

I found this thread from a google search when my cheapo 18650 charger had the same issue--flashing red/green LED when attempting to charge. As one dude said in this thread, for my charger it meant I had an open circuit--in my case it was caused by one or both batteries not touching the charger contact(s) on the positive end. This was no doubt because the cheap charger contacts bent inward slightly when squashing the previous batteries into the charger. The fix was to unplug the charger, then insert an object (a ball-point pen was handy) behind the contacts one at a time, and carefully bend them upward and outward ever so slightly. Problem solved--now I have a solid red light indicating the batts are charging. Hope this helps someone! If this doesn't help, then I reccomend smacking the charger. It may not help, but it sure feels good.

 

[DonJuane]

I also found this thread from a google search. I recently found four old Samsung 18650 batteries (IRC18650-26C, about 5 years old) and put them in my 2 cheap chargers. The red/green started flashing immediately (previously on the cheap/over-rated Ultrafires the chargers used to show red for dead, green for mean, I mean charged . Well I decided that the Samsungs must have been causing an abnormal condition to make the charging light flash red/green so I removed them and put in my week's previously drained Ultrafire red batteries that I knew last week showed an indicator light of red when dead. To my surprise now the charger was flashing red/green for the (crappy overrated) Ultrafires just as seen with the Samsungs. First thought was I had ruined the 2 chargers by inserting the Samsungs. Then I thought there was nothing to lose after frying everything, so I decided to just put the two different type of batteries in and let the chargers flash for a while to see what would happen. I put in 2 red Ultrafires in one flashing G/R charger and the 2 dead pink Samsungs in the other 2 cell charger. I let them both flash R/G but kept feeling of the charger and batteries to make sure they weren't overheating while heading toward an in-home fireworks display. 24 hours later, the Ultrafire charger indicator turned green and 48 hours later the Samsung's charger turned green. So I am not sure about this red/green flashing status other than to say it seemed to charge my batteries well but at the same time I believe charging of the Ultrafires was a lot quicker last time. All the batteries were fully charged after the long wait and appear to be working fine. Not sure if I burned out something in the charger by putting the totally dead Samsungs in the chargers what caused my chargers to start the red/green flashing business and now take what seems like around 10 hours per 1000mA of battery capacity to produce a full charge. I can't speak to this as a scientific experiment, however, because always just charging batteries overnight, I never paid attention before to how long it was taking to charge them.

As a caviat, I did place 4 more of the Samsung batteries in a 4 battery power bank (on a 2A wall charger) and they all charged to full capacity in about 10 hours, so this leads me to believe that maybe the cheap chargers don't do so well with the higher amp batteries such as the 2600mA Samsungs. Still don't hold my experiments to guide your purchases without verification on your own.