1. Home
  2. Model Railroad Forum
  3. Long-term impact of NiMH batteries in MTH Protosound 1 rig?

Long-term impact of NiMH batteries in MTH Protosound 1 rig?

The 8.4V NiCad battery finally gave up the ghost in my 4-year-old MTH diesel locomotive with Protosound 1. A locomotive locked in neutral isn't much fun under the Christmas tree :-(

I've since found a replacement battery, a 180 maH nickel metal hydride, at a local Batteries Plus store. The process of replacing the battery has reset the locomotive to a non-locked state, so I'm back up and running after the relatives have left and the tree is coming down. The shop owner was confident that the 11 mA trickle-charge provided by the protosound gear would be sufficient to charge the NiMH battery just fine.

Anyone use NiMH batteries in protosound gear? Anyone see any long-term impact (positive or negative) to doing so?

Thanks!

- SoCalRailFan

Reply to
socalrailfan
Loading thread data ...

I'm no battery expert but I have replaced NiCads with NiMH batteries in several appliances over the years and I don't see any issues. Oldest one is my Sony 49MHz cordless phone. I changed over to NiMH probably about 10 years ago and it still works ok. Phone itself was manufactured in the 1980s.

NiMH batteries have characteristics similar to NiCad except for less of a memory effect and greater capacity. So this substitution should not cause any problems. Whatever differences there are, they seem to be insignificant.

Peteski

Reply to
Peter W.

I'm using the Harbor Freight 8.4v NiMh($6.95) in a QSI QS-2(same architecture as PS-1) equipped MTH Berk. No problems - I just powered it up last night after a ~11 month slumber. I charged it in reset for about 2 hrs. just to be on the safe side before putting on a train.

The original NiCd battery lasted 8 years before starting to give me trouble.

Rob

Reply to
trainfan1

While I am not the original Poster about NIMH vs MI-Cads. My old AT&T Merlin 206 controler has the feature pack 2 that uses a NICad to remember its programming. Its shot and when we lose power I have to go into programming mode to reprogram all of the telephone speed call numbers, Royal PITA! Now here is my question. Is the charging rate for a NIMH the same as a NI-Cad? the original battery was a nicad that was soldered to the board. (big can nicad 50Mah 3.6V) closest in Nicads are now even more capacity (lots more, like 10x the original)but are smaller in form factors. Now If I put a NiMH into the controler would it be properly charged? BTW. Yes, I now do have another HO train set here to put together soon. Need a bigger apartment to build a layout in. Still using X2f couplers here.

Reply to
B'ichela

a NIMH the same as a NI-Cad?< To my understanding, NO!

Reply to
Jon Miller

It depends on how the charger cherges them. If it does it by time then they will never get fully charged. But if it senses the voltage then I would say that they'll get fully charged. It'll just take longer.

And NiMH are not 10x the capacity of NiCad. Thay are more like twice or

3x at the most. I just said that I haven't run into any issues by doing this substitution. My cordless old cordless phone, power screwdriver, can opener and severa other items are functioning prefectly well.

My newer cordless phone (Siemens) takes either NiCad or NiMH AA sized batteries. It was stated right in the manual. So it must cdetect charge by the peak voltage.

Now if you wanted to replace NiCad with Li ION batteries - that would not work at all.

I'm sure a Google search on NiCad and NiMH would give lots of info. :-)

Peteski

Reply to
Peter W.

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.