Opus BT-C3100 not working
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Sorry to hear. I haven't seen or read of this issue before and can't really help, but this doesn't strike me as being very encouraging just on its face in terms of resolving it. (I assume this is a 'hard' (not intermittent) problem and does not clear w/ power-on reset, vs one which can be cleared but then recoccurs on subsequent operations.)
Restarting the charger doesn't help unfortunately. Maybe it's just a good reason for me buy a new charger instead
Which are the most popular charges now days? XTAR VX4?
I had 3 of them which failed within 2 years of use, so it's probably time to toss it. One of them made a battery go thermal. It's a good thing there was fresh snow out the window
Thanks for your input 👍
Which charger did you end up with getting to replace the Opus?
Liotokala LII-500, xtar 4 series…
In my case, a SkyRC MC3000 (x2) - (FW Ver. 1.15 specifically). One might say I've 'voted with my wallet', twice; once last Aug, and again last Dec. Based on everything I'm aware of today, I would do nothing different today. I have info today that I didn't have last year, and it supports this conclusion even further.
I was using the Opus BT-C3100 for the testing and batch jobs, and a couple of 2-slot XTARs (which I no longer use) for small daily simple charging. It hasn't seen 'heavy' use, but regular use since the mid-late 'teens, with no known malfunctions / failures. It just has some performance deficiencies I wanted to improve on. My Opus is still completely functional, and although in a backup role, I did use it just last week to run a test and it worked fine. One could probably do worse than that today in that particular segment, I just found that it didn't meet my requirements and decided to upgrade to meet those.
I should add that I'm only using the above chargers for various lithium-ion chemistries, and the largest / longest cells I work with are protected 18650s. I've never used them w/ NiMH. As an aside, I've also only used the native manual machine interface / controls of the MC3000 to date.
I'll defer to others to speak to the proliferation of chargers currently on the market and actually recommend things. The product life cycles on chargers seem conspicuously short of late, with new models being released very frequently. Although I do take note of them, I'm not fully up to date on the models in the higher volume sub-categories, and haven't seen anything that impressed me as meeting my own criteria. I'm also still unaware of anything currently for sale or said to be coming along which can or is likely to compete with the MC3000 head-to-head.
Charger discussions are frequent here, and I'm sure there are those more up to date on the market than I am, and who likely use some of the newer models themselves and can offer opinions. There could be some good stuff out there I just haven't checked out yet.
Just FYI: On a cautionary note, please do some due diligence / research with your shopping. I have recently read more than one account, of more than one documented incident, involving more than one model of charger, which resulted in smoke boiling out of the device. In each case, apparently the cells were not smoking (fortunately), but rather the device internals. I've seen photos. Not everyone designing chargers these days knows what they're doing. When you buy something, try to make it from a company that's been in the charger business (specifically) for a good while, and has a track record.
