Shoshine 9V Lithium Ion and Ni-MH battery charger
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- Опубліковано 18 жов 2024
- After starting to use one of these chargers I started having a row of Faulty batteries, similarly to what many others reported on-line.
Knowing my batteries were fine (used and charged for about a year prior to owning this charger) and the first charger failed, I ordered another one to check if this was a one off or just poor design.
The results show the Soshine charger to be completely unsuitable for lithium batteries and a comparison with a digital camera charger is performed where we can see the safety checks being implemented.
Lithium charger basics:
Any good charger, suitable to lithium batteries should cut the output if the cell is at less than 2.5V or (5V for 2 cells) as deeply discharged lithium cells pose a fire hazard if recharged
In the worse case scenario, once the cell is identified the maximum voltage should be limited to 4.2V (or 8.4V for two cells). Any other values show that the charger is not implementing safety checks and therefore poses a fire hazard risk. When buying one of these make sure it complies or return it back for a refund.
I am summer from soshine company.Regarding to the rebviews,please find the reply as below:
1. This charger is not a specific charger for lithium battery, but a multi-functional smart charger, which can support 9V batteries as: LiFePO4 3pcs in series, NiMh 7pcs in series, ternary lithium battery 2pcs in series. And this charger has a 0V battery(means: lithium batteries’ PCB are in protection state and NiMh batteries with serious over discharge condition) activation function.
2. Since the 0V activation function exists, it is not possible to determine if there is a battery access according to if the voltage is higher than 0V. The NiMh battery maximum voltage (charging) can up to 10.85V, and consider some unpredictable factors and errors, so no-load floating voltage is set to 13V (must be higher than 10.85V). By check whether floating voltage is less than 12.5V to determine whether there is a battery access. This floating voltage is not the charging voltage for lithium batteries.
3. After battery is accessed, charger will enter the battery type determine procedure, the time is about 20 seconds. If the battery has been determined as ternary lithium battery, charger will automatically switch the charging mode to constant current 200MA, constant voltage 8.4V for charging. So, as long as the charger is no problem, there is no reason for charger to over charge the battery.
4. As the charger will continue to determine the battery types, so it’s not possible to get the real charge voltage if directly load to resistance. If you really want to test the charge voltage for lithium battery, you can disconnect the charger’s connect test point (Figure 1) into the factory test mode.
(Note: Do not enter the factory mode test time for more than 1 minute.)
5. As overcharge is bad for lithium battery, so all ternary lithium batteries will be covered by protection boards for use. Multi-section combination is even more so. Generally protection board is to prevent the battery from: overcharge, over discharge, over current, short circuit, etc. Overcharge protection function works to turn off the charging circuit if it detected any one of the battery’s voltage exceeds 4.35V (the protection voltage differs in different protection chips). Due to this charger's battery identification mode, turn off the charging loop is equivalent to removing. So the voltage tested this time is floating voltage, not the battery charge to the 13V high voltage.
6. 9V battery has only two electrodes, so the charger can not detect the voltage of each cell, it will keep charging if the battery voltage is less than 8.4V. From the video we can see, one of the battery voltage is only 1.34V (voltage down to the value, the cells have been scrapped), the other battery voltage is 3.71V (normal cells), two batteries has been seriously unbalanced. When the normal cell voltage reaches 4.35V and the other voltage is less than 4.05V, the charger will continue to charge, PCB will enter the overcharge protection state.Conclusion: This video does not indicate that this charger is not suitable to charge for lithium batteries. But can explain the battery quality is very poor.
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Thanks for a thorough explanation!
In fact I have the same charger and never had any problems with it.
Great work.. thanks man.. u just saved me some money.. how about ebl 9v charger? is that any better?
awesome test of these battery chargers, do you think it is more the cause of the protection ic though? it has such low voltage tolerances it does not seem like it would do a good job, 13v is only 5v above the input voltage at 100% soc i am sure higher power circuits would properly protect from 20v at the terminals dont you think? thanks for sharing!
+SuperBrainAK
I always take any protection IC with a pinch of salt, because the charger is supposed to put the right voltage in the first case. If there were no protection IC (Some crap Chinese battery) and the charger was allowed to top the battery up to 12V, surely a leakage or perhaps a fire would happen. This is probably the reason why most stores dont sell 9V batteries with lithium chemistry. Liability issues...
With that said, if one were to count with the protection IC to stop charge once the top value is reached, regardless of the charger output, in all fairness, any NIMH/NICD charger could be used, so as a consumer one can conclude that the device is not fit for purpose.
A workaround could be to place a zener such as a 1N5238B across the charger terminals. This would shunt enough current to force the charger to detect the battery as a Li-Ion and even if the protection circuit opened, the output would be low enough to keep things safe.
+Susana Godinho true, but my point is that the protection should "protect" the battery without failure from a failed charger or other extreme voltage spike, though I guess it did fail decently safe without having a lithium fire so it did its job, they arent going to make it so robust that you can do just about anything to it and still work. regardless I will definitely make sure I get a lithium only charger so I wont have to worry about these things. what is your opinion on the EBL AC two cell charger (.amazon.com/dp/B00ER10DZ0)? that is what I am thinking about getting when I feel I need some 9v's (I have a programmable charger but having something standalone is preferred)
Thanks for this video. My (similar) charger charges 10,2V at left port and 10,4V at right port. Should that be ok (regarding overheating/explosion)?
Thanks, I was just about to order one of these.
But do I have to buy a (big) hobby-Charger to get a better alternative?
+Juergen Lilien
I'm on the same boat. Ill be designing a switch mode converter to take power from a USB port and boost it to 8.4V at 200mA. The problem is that there aren't many commercial chargers suitable to charge such a small battery out there, although I suspect if you can find one which is SPECIFICALLY for 9V lithium batteries (Rather than the universal type) you should be fine.
The hobby charge might not be the best alternative, although it depends how low it allows the charge current to be set (200mA ideal). Those things essentially operate as a Constant Current Source, while monitoring the battery terminal voltage to determine SoC and charge termination, rather than a true CC-CV supply, which can keep the battery in trickle charge for an unlimited amount of time, ensuring correct charge.
Are you good with electronics?
If protection circuit gets damaged at 13v, than it is no good at all. Their batteries, same brand as charger work just fine. after they stop charging at 8.3xV, green led comes one... you your no load test is not valid
This charger has no issues detecting that the battery is fully charged, where it fails is under abnormal conditions, when the cells inside the '9V' battery are unbalanced and the protection circuit acts.