Please recommend a good battery charger/cycler

We have operated the Triton on supplies as low as 6 Amps with no problem. This applies to charging receiver/transmitter packs at reasonable rates as well as Lithium-polymer up to a couple of amps 3s packs.

-- Red S. Red's R/C Battery Clinic

us out for "revolting" information.

| good idea. make sure you hace enough amps for the triton. i thinkit | requires 15. otherwise, you'll be waiting a long time to charge.

The Triton is rated as requiring 13 amps.

However, it will _only_ use this much amperage if you're charging an

18 cell NiCd pack at 5 amps.

As long as the voltage of the battery pack that you're charging is less than 12 volts, the amperage it actually requires will be a little bit more than the rate than you're charging your batteries at. So if you're charging a 8 cell NiCd pack at 2 amps, the Triton will use a little more than 2 amps.

If your battery pack needs more than 12 volts to charge (which usually starts to happen with 9 or more cells NiCd/NiMH, or 3 cells LiPo) it will start using more amperage than it feeds to the battery that it's charging. The extra amperage will be used to boost the input voltage to the needed value. If it only needs a little more than 12 volts, it'll use only a little more amps in than it emits. If it needs 24 volts, it'll use twice the amps ...

Most people don't ever use more than 6 amps on their Tritons.

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The Triton will charge up to 24 cells. You can charge 4 6 cell packs easily, you will have to make your self a wiring harness to hook 4 packs up to it, but it can be done. All 4 packs should be the same mah.

Butting in, I too am interested in getting a good charger. I had settled on the Triton until I read the threads about the way they treated people who accidently damaged their Triton within the warranty period - ie charge a them a $100 to replace it when I would have thought they could forego profit on replacement and perhaps only charge $50 or so. (as street price is around $120 then around $100 or a bit less is the wholesale price)

So now I am looking at the SuperBrain instead - they can charge more than one set of cells at a time, and seem a pretty good buy. Are they any good tho?

David

Vance wrote:

I wanted to do as Vance wrote.

the question is if the Graphic capabilities of the ICE are worth th limit to charge 10cell. only......

The superbrain seems to have problems charging LiPo battery so I won' consider it.

Cia

-- Jena6

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| Butting in, I too am interested in getting a good charger. I had | settled on the Triton until I read the threads about the way they | treated people who accidently damaged their Triton within the | warranty period - ie charge a them a $100 to replace it when I would | have thought they could forego profit on replacement and perhaps | only charge $50 or so. (as street price is around $120 then around | $100 or a bit less is the wholesale price)

I'm not sure how big of a deal that would be to me. Instead, I'd try not to damage it :)

I got one of the very first Tritons produced. I had it for 15 months before I got any LiPo packs, and discovered that it couldn't charge them more than 10% -- it's voltage readings were wrong when charging LiPos, so it cut off way too early. NiMH and NiCd batteries were fine, but LiPos and Pb batteries were not. Very strange.

I sent it in, even though it was out of warranty. They fixed it for free. (It may have just been a matter of calibration, I don't know.)

I now have two Tritons. They have their quirks, but for the money, they seemed to be the best for my needs. I'd happily buy another, though if I needed another charger I might consider the ICE by DuraTrax. It's limited to 10 NiCd/NiMH cells or 4 LiPo cells, but beyond that it looks like the Triton on steroids.

| So now I am looking at the SuperBrain instead - they can charge more | than one set of cells at a time, and seem a pretty good buy. Are | they any good tho?

There's several SuperBrain chargers. I guess you're talking about the

959? It only goes up to 8 cells, which is probably fine for most R/C car users, though lots of planes use larger packs than that.

As suggested, you can charge two packs on the Triton at once if you make a harness to put them in series. Works best if the pack's are the same and are both discharged by the same amount -- if not, you'll need to peak charge them individually after charging them together, but that should be relatively quick. I don't suggest doing this (charging two packs in series at once) if you don't understand the implications.

I dont use the li po batterys yet so i use a Ace digi pulse it will charge as many as 6 batterys at a time i also have a accu cycle they both are several years old and work fine.

Jena67 -

You heard right about the MRC charger and LiPo's, though some of the warnings are disappearing - maybe somebody doesn't want the word to get out. Suggest you acquire different chargers, one dedicated for LiPo and one for all the rest. LiPo charger technology is changing fast in the hobby market, but there are currently none that can be trusted to 'set it and forget it.' As long as your going to have to babysit LiPo's under charge anyway, might as well get a simple, cheap manual charger. At least you'll have the assurance that it won't override your settings because it thinks it is smarter than you are (this has been reported with chargers having a lot more smarts than the Superbrain). I am using a ThunderPower 425 which sells for about $55, as it meets my KISS criteria It does autodetect cell count, etc. but doesn't change anything if it doesn't agree with my settings - just refuses to start the charge cycle and sounds an alert. I do backstop it for safety reasons with a PCM. At less than $15 that's cheap insurance that shuts down the charge current when/if any cell in the pack exceeds 4.2V.

Abel

True. My LHS had the Celectra 1-3 sell LiPo charger on the shelf so I picked it up. Fine unit for just doing LiPo's. Horizon carries them. The E-tec chargers that Balsa Products carries also are a good value.

PCM? Sorry, Abel, you lost me there. :-) LeeH To reply substitute centurytel for nospam.

-- Abel Pranger wrote: ... I do

Oops, pardon my acronyms, Lee. It's protective charge module, at least in PolyQuest lingo, and those are the LiPo's I use most often. Essentially the same thing that is built into the battery packs for most consumer products that use lithium technology. Good interim safety step for our purposes, until chargers are readily available that charge cells in parallel, or have cell balancers built into them. The latter go a step beyond the PCM, as they can prevent/correct cell imbalance, rather than just detect it and interrupt the charge current when the strongest cell goes over 4.2 V. When a PCM trips due to cell imbalance, it's up to the user to restore balance, charging the weaker cells one cell at a time.

Abel

do not like Hobbico. In the past I had junk and have been staying away from thier stuff but a few of the guys I fly with have this charger. mk

I've never liked Duratrax much ater several mediocre experiences with their vehicles, *but*, the Ice charger is excellent. I've owned quite a few chargers and this is the most versatile and technically capable. The cycle feature is great and it's handy to have ten charge profile memories. You can only charge one pack at a time, like most others. I highly recommend it.

Brian