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I wrote all of this up based on reading up on the Maha C9000 charger, but before I got it. Once I start getting some results, I will post that later. I have a collection of 40 NiMH batteries ranging in age from 9 years to just a couple of weeks. They all take a charge on my old charger, but some are pretty weak. A couple of sets that Susan used in a quick charger are pretty damaged and don’t hold a charge for very long at all. I was interested to see what kind of results I could get in reviving them with my new charger, the Maha MH-C9000.

If a battery hasn’t been used for 3 months or has just been purchased, Maha recommends starting out with break-in cycle. This cycle is based on some international standard used to measure the capacity of batteries.

Continue reading “Battery Rehab”

In 2005 Sanyo introduced Eneloop NiMH rechargeable batteries. Part of their marketing was that they are already charged when you get them and you can use them right away. The reason for this is they charge them at the factory and that the batteries have “low self discharge” (LSD), in other words it takes them much longer to lose a charge sitting on a shelf than other NiMH batteries. Sanyo claimed that Eneloops will retain 85% of their charge after a year. I bought some last year and have no reason to doubt the claim. I have two HP calculators that eat through AAA batteries so I wanted something rechargeable but also something with a fairly long shelf life. I thought it would be good to have a set for my Archos Jukebox too since I have been charging its batteries separately instead of by using the AC adapter it came with (gets very hot and can’t be good for the batteries).

Continue reading “Eneloop Batteries”

In 2002 I researched and bought a good battery charger called the Maha C-204F. It only does AAA and AA batteries, but it charges them fairly slowly which means they are charged more fully and with less heat (damaging) than the fast chargers that you get at regular stores. I had to order the Maha (billed as “the mother of all chargers”) from Thomas Distributing because they aren’t easy to find. It worked great for a couple of years before one side of it went bad and I could only charge two batteries at a time instead of four. Eventually I bought another one just like it from Thomas in 2006. I burned out its AC adapter in Ireland when I plugged it in to a 220 socket, but I had the old adapter, so no problem.

After my dealings with flashlights lately, I also learned some about batteries and particularly NiMH rechargeable batteries. I have been using them for a long time and even got some Sanyo Eneloops in 2008 to use in my calculator because they hold 85% of their charge after year whereas regular NiMH batteries can easily lose 10% per month. After three months of no use you really need to recharge regular NiMH batteries because if they get too low it can damage them. I got some pretty high capacity NiMH batteries to go with Susan’s camera a few years ago and they were toast after maybe a year. They just never held a charge very well. Part of that may have been not adequately breaking them in by charging them and then using them (not all the way down) a few times.

Continue reading “Powerex Maha MH-C9000 Charger”

After doing research on flashlights, I thought it would be neat to get a solar battery charger. Then you could run the flashlights for free! I have links to some solar products on my iPod battery web page. I found a couple of posts on Candlepower Forums about solar chargers and the experts there seemed to wonder what the point is. A decent solar charger will cost nearly $100 which will buy a lot of batteries. If you are camping then you would have to carry the solar charger with you and then leave it in the sun while it charged batteries. Why not carry some extra batteries? Even the better ones will take all day to fully charge 4 AA batteries and that would require full sun and probably moving the solar panel to get the best exposure throughout the day. Will you have time for that?

It is still intriguing. Some of the solar chargers have an internal battery that the panel charges and then you plug your device (iPod, Palm, phone, or battery charger) into a USB jack on the charger (at night I guess) and get juice from the internal battery. That’s good because you don’t want to leave your batteries or your iPod in the sun all day.

One of the better ones may be a folding one made by Powerfilm. The key is to get plenty of area and this one folds out to get extra coverage, but can be folded up to about the size of a wallet. The advantage and problem is that it uses thin film solar cells which won’t crack like the glass ones, but are not as efficient either (so it needs more area). I couldn’t find a whole lot on user experience for these things. Most of the other ones I’ve seen have much less area but are using more efficient solar cells. Some of them are clearly junk and might require several days of sun just to charge a few AA batteries.

The only other use would be for a prolonged power outage, but even then I have a battery charger that can run off of the car lighter and I could probably charge batteries at work and bring them home. Now if the power grid fails for some reason, then it might be nice to have a solar charger, but if that is the case then I might have bigger worries than if my iPod or flashlight will work.

Continue reading “Solar Charger”

Tropicana is having a promotion lately where you can enter a code off of a carton of orange juice and save 100 square feet of rainforest. Publix had a good deal on orange juice plus there was a coupon for $1 off two half gallons, so I stocked up today (no Trop50 for me!). I entered my codes and am now up to 1300 square feet. The website has a page of Top Rescuers. Of course I’m nowhere close, but I was surprised to see that the top team is the US Air Force Academy cadets with 53,600 square feet (an acre is 43,560). Second has 50,800 and third is quite distant at 13,300. But even the cadets pale in comparison to Brendan of Franklin, Massachusetts who has saved 172,800 square feet. If the academy were an individual, they would come in 4th. The total saved so far is 35 million square feet.

Tropicana Top Rescuers