The Battery Database

[z_ip2k]

Hello, I've been browsing this forum for a few weeks now, and I've been here before from trips unrelated to flashlights (electronics).



I have other hobbies besides flashlights, home stereo, and car audio. They include, but are not limited to: competitive racing of small R/C cars (Mini-ZRacer), higher-end personal audio (Head-Fi), and Laptops (and computers in general). Among these seemingly unrelated hobbies, they all share the same driving force: Batteries.



Batteries have some huge hype surrounding certain products on the internet, and generally ads and reviews aim to confuse the average consumer and sell them re-badged low-quality cells for a high mark-up.

Well,

I would like to do something about this. But I need your help.



I am employed by a medium-sized web hosting company, and I've been doing things on the web and with computers for some time, so I decided to purchase a domain name and set up a comprehensive battery wiki that anyone can contribute to,

http://batterydb.com



Since I can't really purchase many different cells and use them just to test them, I'd really appreciate if those of you with the knowledge / equipment could create pages for your particular cells. The guidelines are posted over on the site, but here is what I have so far (constructive / snarky criticism welcome):



Contribute

• This is an open wiki, which means you can create a page even if you're not logged in. However, you will have to complete a captcha. To actually link to your article from a page here, you'll need to create a user account, or wait for your article to be linked up by me.

Creating an article

• To create an article, type the namespace and the name of the article in the search box, then when it says "that page doesn't exist", hold your mouse over the "gear" icon just to the left of the search box, and select "Create this page" from the menu.

Naming Convention

• Please keep the articles in the following format: manufacturer_model-name
  
  • Example of a good name: sanyo_hr4u-2-1000-mbo

What to put in your article

• At this point in time, as much information as you have. I'll try to standardize this at some point, but for the first few articles, I'd just like to get as much information as possible and "see what works", and we'll go from there.
• In general, try to include the following:
  
  • Advertised capacity in MaH
  • Exact model number
  • Date purchased
  • Date data was obtained
  • Approximate recharge cycles the cell has been through
  • Condition of cell (new, slightly used, used daily, damaged, etc)
  • Time since last charge
  • Details of charge (what MaH or C [C= times capacity of the cell]), duration, special charger mode ,if applicable)
  • Equipment used (test equipment and charging equipment)
  • Details of drain (what device, power draw (voltage and MaH), run time)
  • Calculated or measured capacity (a graph would be nice, if you have the data for it)
  • Calculated watt-hours
  • Starting voltage of cell, cell voltage under load, cell voltage when load removed, and cell depleted
  • Price per cell
  • Weight of cell
  • Exact measurements of cell (Measured with accurate calipers, these are now affordable)
  • Your thoughts on the product (the only place for subjective information) Do you feel that the cell is a good value, did it explode in your face, etc.

Testing Equipment

• I own the following relevant equipment:
  
  • PowerEx Maha Wizard One C9000 charger (I will use this for all my analysis)
  • About 12 sets of NiMH batteries in various versions and sizes
  • Fluke 15B digital multimeter
  • Many devices that drain batteries (powerful flashlights, Mini-Z R/C cars, headphone amplifiers etc)

Thanks for your help. I'll be posting this on Mini-ZRacer.com and Head-Fi in the hopes that this idea will be well-received in those contexts as well.