On 16/06/2022 06:03, Udhay Shankar N via Silklist wrote:
What about you folks?
Hmmm, I don't like putting unnecessary wear and tear on lithium batteries (or the faff of charging them), so try and avoid "wireless" devices with their own batteries where possible.
My daily charge device is just my phone.I have a powerbank thing, but it's not regularly used. Every few months I top it up to keep it ready to roll in a hurry, and if it does get used for a day it'll be charged that night, but that's rare.
On the other hand, I've just completed an unnecessarily complicated (and, therefore, fun) battery setup in my van - it has an auxiliary electrical system so it already had a pair of deep-cycle lead acid batteries in the back that charge from the alternator when the engine's running, but are otherwise kept separate from the starter battery so my radios and stuff won't drain the starter. But when I bought it the aux batteries were in a poor state so I bought new ones, and then did my best to recondition the old ones rather than throw them out, and managed to get about half the capacity back - so I then made an electronic device that trickle-charges (suitable for topping up to compensate for their self discharge, not really for charging from flat) the two old batteries from the aux power circuit in the van. I also made cable harnesses for them with the standard 12v DC sockets I use, so they sit in the back of the van plugged into the trickle charger which keeps them ready to use, and I can just unplug them and take them out of the van to power lighting and phone-charging and all that when we're camping.
The design of the trickle charging circuit turned out to be a little bit more complicated than originally anticipated, which was an interesting enough journey that I decided to document it in a blog post, with lots of juicy details of lead acid charging profiles, if anybody is interested:
https://www.snell-pym.org.uk/archives/2022/06/08/trickle-charging-spare-batteries-in-the-van/TL;DR version - high source impedance + high inrush current + voltage-sense switching => metastable behaviour!
Udhay
-- Alaric Snell-Pym (M0KTN neé M7KIT) http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric/
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