SkyRC — IFA 2014 — MC3000 charger-analyzer
- Thread starter kreisl
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kreisl
Flashlight Enthusiast
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- Jul 5, 2012
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you beat me
your point is valid though. ppl who spend the money on a biggish powerful advanced charger —its original title was Advanced Multichemistry Charger instead of Universal Multichemistry Charger— would know something about handling feature-laden flashlights, batteries and chargers imo thru explicit warnings in the user manual. I will ask if there is a general safety software override, apart from the physical fuses, or extreme testing under the OFF setting.
Thanks but no worries at this point in time magellan
your point is valid though. ppl who spend the money on a biggish powerful advanced charger —its original title was Advanced Multichemistry Charger instead of Universal Multichemistry Charger— would know something about handling feature-laden flashlights, batteries and chargers imo thru explicit warnings in the user manual. I will ask if there is a general safety software override, apart from the physical fuses, or extreme testing under the OFF setting.
Thanks but no worries at this point in time magellan
You're welcome. And I do know what you mean about plugging 120 into 240V. Cheap or small electronic devices probably won't have a switching power supply. But they don't have to be cheap, a friend blew out a small electric toothbrush one time that way. Another blew out what I shall call for posting purposes here a personal electronic device. You just can't assume the device can handle it.
Also, I almost learned the hard way about one of these travel surge strips. I have two that I take with me on trips:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003I3LSJ8/?tag=cpf0b6-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N3RFJDU/?tag=cpf0b6-20
We were in New Zealand recently and I was about to plug them in (thru a plug adaptor of course), N.Z. having 50Hz 240V, when I decided to read the labels, and it turns out the Voltage Valet was 120/240V but the Cellet wasn't.
So I plugged the Cellet 120V into the 120/240V Voltage Valet and all was well.
Now, technically you're not supposed to chain surge suppressors together (some will actually say this on the label). My educated guess is that arrangement affects the time constant of the protective voltage clamping circuit--which defeats the reason why you're using one in the first place.
There was one funny thing though, with that arrangement the USB ports would not work. To charge my iPhone I had to plug in the regular adaptor into one of the receptacles. I still don't understand why the USB ports wouldn't work.
Anyway, given all of the above it's not a trivial matter for the average consumer to travel these days with small electronic devices. One wonders how they manage. I consider myself fairly well informed and yet I almost screwed up with the Cellet model. And like I said, one really shouldn't chain surge suppressors either.
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Some higher current hungry phones require more power than standard 500ma USB ports can provide and in that they typically have special circuitry required in the cable connecting them or the USB port for it to sense that it can indeed accept a charge from the device. There is information on how to add the circuitry to a USB port or cable to allow it to charge an iPhone etc on the internet.
Good point. I can see how that could be a problem with those. I had heard something about that but didn't know the details. I just thought these more power hungry devices would sort of "trickle charge" at a low level compared to what they can handle but from what you're saying I guess that doesn't happen. Interesting.
I just have a little iPhone 5C though and it works fine on 500 mA USB ports. The internal battery is only about 1430 mA if I remember right.
I also use these surge strips at home, though not chained together, and in that case the USB ports work just fine with my iPhone. I can however get a faster charge by plugging it into a 1.0 or 2.1 amp adaptor.
Plus USB needs to be stepped down to 5V so I was wondering if going from 240 to 120 to 5V was just too much for these surge strips to handle.
I just have a little iPhone 5C though and it works fine on 500 mA USB ports. The internal battery is only about 1430 mA if I remember right.
I also use these surge strips at home, though not chained together, and in that case the USB ports work just fine with my iPhone. I can however get a faster charge by plugging it into a 1.0 or 2.1 amp adaptor.
Plus USB needs to be stepped down to 5V so I was wondering if going from 240 to 120 to 5V was just too much for these surge strips to handle.
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most AC walwarts etc use transformers and/or DC/DC converters such that power in is related to power out with pretty decent efficiency perhaps the worst are about 50% efficient which means if you want 2.1A at 5v that is 10.5 watt and at 50% efficiency you would need 21 watts of power at 120v/240v which gets you about 0.175/0.0875A. We are talking fractions of an amp at those high voltages and considering most power strips can easily handle 10 amps it is no contest.
Yes, and to drive home the point further you should look at the specs of a computer power supply these days they have some whopper out there for gaming machines that put out 1000 watts and have 5v outputs in the 20A range PLUS all the other outputs like a 3.3v at about 20A and 12v output in the 80A range. These are all simultaneously available.
Yowser. I had no idea. Being basically retired these days my computing needs are minimal and now get along most of the time with just an iPad. I hardly even use my PC or Mac Air laptop anymore. But in the old days I usually had the latest and greatest, fully tricked out PC.
What do they use those 20 amp outputs for, to power their custom sub-ohm hot-wire mech mods? Does the custom vaping community know about these machines? LOL
What do they use those 20 amp outputs for, to power their custom sub-ohm hot-wire mech mods? Does the custom vaping community know about these machines? LOL
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3.3v on PC power supplies is typically for processor power and I think maybe some PCI-E cards too 5v is used for USB ports and with the new USB 3 standard being incorporated into newer motherboards that can output far more than 500 ma vs 900+ma for USB 3 I know hard drives use 5 and 12v, I'm not sure but I suspect these new SSD drives use 5v also memory chips used to use 5v but I think dropped down to 3.3v. In other words there isn't a lot left on a PC that runs on more than 5v these days other than motors in drives and fans.
kreisl
Flashlight Enthusiast
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- Jul 5, 2012
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i have given them a ring. seems like that they have been resuming development work, hmm interesting. major revisions of the circuitry and pcb layout as i heard. why i didnt understand well, ive been so happi with my 4(?) prototypes. maybe i get to pick up a new one during the course of my traveling trip lol
there should be news in a few. i am here to report so plz tune in when you can
there should be news in a few. i am here to report so plz tune in when you can
kreisl
Flashlight Enthusiast
- Joined
- Jul 5, 2012
- Messages
- 2,251
i am now in beijing, a geman without any knowledge of chinese omg lol… anyhow here another incremental update:
with the major revisions of the pcb they've now also accomodated connection points for Four-Terminal-Sensing on the pcb per slot. Will be interesting to see if they really manage to make physical use of them with the sliders, rails and anode contacts. as i hear, Four-Terminal-Sensing was a reasonable feature requested by a charger expert user from the geman flashlight forum.
actual current flow thru the battery is being measured by a shunt in direct series similar to a multimeter measurement, so whatever internal resistance and voltage drop your multimeter has, the two displays of the current should be the same. current flow is constant current, no pulsing or PWM. note that hardly any chinese charger or hobby charger in the market measures the actual current thru the battery, while expensive geman battery chargers do so (e.g. tba).
firmware needs to be rewritten from scratch, so the possibility of user calibration is taken into account from that early on, nice.
i believe that we'll here more news during my trip thru nite china :wave:
with the major revisions of the pcb they've now also accomodated connection points for Four-Terminal-Sensing on the pcb per slot. Will be interesting to see if they really manage to make physical use of them with the sliders, rails and anode contacts. as i hear, Four-Terminal-Sensing was a reasonable feature requested by a charger expert user from the geman flashlight forum.
actual current flow thru the battery is being measured by a shunt in direct series similar to a multimeter measurement, so whatever internal resistance and voltage drop your multimeter has, the two displays of the current should be the same. current flow is constant current, no pulsing or PWM. note that hardly any chinese charger or hobby charger in the market measures the actual current thru the battery, while expensive geman battery chargers do so (e.g. tba).
firmware needs to be rewritten from scratch, so the possibility of user calibration is taken into account from that early on, nice.
i believe that we'll here more news during my trip thru nite china :wave:
Hi friends!
How are you going?
I was wondering if there is any news abut the mc3000... Because there is a new version of th opus Ct3100 (v2.2 with some issues fixed...)
If there is not any ETA and/or price I will end purchasing the opus XP
Cheers!
How are you going?
I was wondering if there is any news abut the mc3000... Because there is a new version of th opus Ct3100 (v2.2 with some issues fixed...)
If there is not any ETA and/or price I will end purchasing the opus XP
Cheers!
Ferdinando
Newly Enlightened
1 year more delay
sad news for me
I've hoped one/two months only.
sad news for me
I've hoped one/two months only.
