ElectriFly Equinox balancer/Triton Jr. Charger/Energizer cradle

[Beastmaster]

Well, I bit the bullet today. Got an Equinox Cell balancer with a Triton Jr. charger, and gutted a 20 dollar Eveready charging cradle. Built everything up in about 3 hours.

A couple of good things and bad things.

Bad - I *have* to do 4 cells until I figure an interface method that allows me to charge just one.

Good - this combination from Electrifly/Great Planes is commonly available in local hobby stores everywhere.

I had to figure out the pinouts for the 4 cell balancer cable. It's an odd thing too - Taking the Equinox 8 pin 4S cable, the last two wires are ground, the first two wires are positive, and the remaining ones are the balance wires with one position unused.

The Equinox balancer can do 5 cells, which is somewhat cool. It's too bad that I can't do more than 4 on the K-Mart special Eveready cradle.

The Triton Jr. Charger - easy as pie to use. Inputs using 12v (and I'm using an Astron power supply to do that duty), and has banana jacks for the Equinox.

Picture of the setup will be done as soon as I upload it to my web server.

-Steve

 

[Beastmaster]

And here we are.

-Steve

 

[adamlau]

I hear that the Jr has a ninety-minute cutoff which effectively prevents a deeply discharged cell from fully charging. I was going to purchase the Equinox until I came across the LBA10. Nice setup, though :thumbsup:

 

[Beastmaster]

It's a 2 hour cutoff for the LiPo/LiIon settings. For NiMH and Lead, you can shut the timer off if you want to for longer cycles.

-Steve

 

[Beastmaster]

Okay - So far I've gone through and balanced every one of my AW's, my UltraFire protected (and found another bad one in the process), and three batches of some unprotected generic 16340's (all which passed far better than the one bad UltraFire - go figure...)

I'm liking this setup. I've also mounted everything onto a 1/2" plexiglas sheet and it's all zip-tied down.

I should have done this before. Really, really should have done this before.

Anyways - one of these days I'm going to build up a second one. Maybe next paycheck...

-Steve

 

[Rick]

Is there a reason you chose a charger without a built in balancer?

 

[Beastmaster]

Yep. No hobby shop within 15 miles of me had the Hyperion that I wanted, nor the Tenergy/DN unit.

The end result cost me about the same....within 20 bucks.

Update - As I mentioned in another post - my total cost for this setup was $134.

Breakdown:

- $75 for the Triton Junior, after tax. This was a prior gen model. I'm not going to do much extended Lead battery charging (if at all) and all of my NiMH and NiCad all have other dedicated chargers - so the added benefit of shutting off the timer had zero benefit to me.

- $29 for the Equinox balancer and the 4S and 5S balancer cables.

- $20 for the charging cradle from K-Mart.

- $5 for a huge 1/2" thick piece of Plexiglas that everything is now mounted to. I used at most 1/5th of it.

- $5 for the 12v charger plug to banana plug/post connector.

I already own two 3 amp 12 volt power supplies and a huge Astron power supply for my Amateur Radio stuff. I took my smallest 3 amp unit and attached it to the Plexiglas too. So I now have an all in one charging platform to put everything on. I also had the "spacers" (bolts, really) and the foam.

A Hyperion EOS 610i costs about $169, and that's before the charging cradle. A DN/Tenergy costs about $70 bucks, but the only places that had them locally are literally on the other end of Maricopa County from where I live and work. So if I factor in my fuel costs and my time driving cross county, that would mean that I paid about 20 bucks more for the current unit that I have.

Since everything I bought was within a 5 mile radius of each other, that allowed me more time to plan and build it.

-Steve

 

[PsychoPilot]

The Triton Jr. charges li-ions to only 4.1v which gives me a discharge capacity of ~560mAh out of an AW750mAh 14500 cell. Is there a workaround for this?

 

[PsychoPilot]

I think I found the workaround, set the battery type as LliPo. The LiPo max voltage is 4.2v vs. 4.1v for Li-Ion. Im going to e-mail Great Planes to see if this is alright.

 

[sadtimes]

I have the Triton2 and from what I understand its better to charge only to 4.1v for Li-ion as it will give better life cycles.

I do miss my cells being 4.16 off the WF-139 charger but if it means I can double my cell cycles, (which is what I read on here somewhere) I think Im ok with that...

Fresh off the charger if I recall correctly my cells are 4.06, well somewhere close to that, I wll have charge one and actually remeber! =-)

 

[Black Rose]

I think I found the workaround, set the battery type as LliPo. The LiPo max voltage is 4.2v vs. 4.1v for Li-Ion. Im going to e-mail Great Planes to see if this is alright.

You'll get significantly more cycles from your cells by terminating them at 4.1v

Up to 1500 cycles at 4.1v versus up to 500 cycles at 4.2v.

 

[PsychoPilot]

Yah mine is 4.07. Im sure the battery likes not being charged fully but 27% less capacity is too much. It should handle it safely because its rated 3.7v nominal and 4.2v max. I think older Li-Ion cells were 3.6v nominal and 4.1v max.

 

[PsychoPilot]

Hehe you posted while I was typing Black Rose.

Getting that many cycles is enticing but I don't need the battery to last five years hehe. My laptop still has 95% of its original capacity after 2+ years and I charge it more often than my light batteries.

 

[PsychoPilot]

You know... now it makes sense to me to only charge the battery to 4.1v to increase its lifespan.

Im only going to use the Li-Ion for showing off my Quark AA's full potential (which is incredible) so no point using it when I don't need max mode. That means it wont be used daily, so I'll either carry it is as a backup to an eneloop or store it in the fridge.

I've only had the Quark AA and Triton Jr for a couple days so Im still working on my EDC system.

BTW I am so glad that 4sevens was out of wf-139 chargers, which gave me a chance to research them more. After reading all the negative comments on the Ultrafire, I cancelled my order and bought the Triton. It satisfies my need for information and precision just like my Maha MCH-9000.

 

[sadtimes]

my 18650's and 16340's come off the charger at 4.03.. checked today