Battery Tester

Does anyone have a favorite battery tester that they would recommend?

Other than what Radio Shack sells I see little else available.

Thanks

TMT

Reply to
Too_Many_Tools
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Too_Many_Tools hath wroth:

Look again, this time using "battery tester" as Google search keyword.

Sure. For automobile batteries, I use one of these: I have one of the 500A variety. If it gets hot and tries to catch fire, the battery is good.

For smaller batteries, I just use a DVG (digital volts guesser). Depending on battery chemistry, I can usually determine whether the battery is totally dead, shorted, or otherwise ready for recycling. What I can't determine with a DVG is if the capacity of the battery is anywhere near the specified values. For that, I have to create a discharge curve, and compare it to a known good battery. I built my own long ago consisting of a test socket (for AA, C, D cells), constant current load, and an ancient strip chart recorder. I can tell if a battery or battery pack are dying by comparing the original curve, with the current test curve.

A more modern version can be found for about $100 at: I don't own one of these, yet.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Is that anything like back in the witch hunt days? If they drowned when held under water, I guess that meant they weren't a witch ? what analogy :)

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"I'm never wrong, once i thought i was, but was mistaken"
Real Programmers Do things like this.
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Reply to
Jamie

Jamie hath wroth:

Ummm... that was during the Salem witch hunts. Back then, they didn't have the benefit of industry and government approved inspections, standards, and testing procedures. Forced to invent their own, they produced something similar to hiring a competitor to design your QA procedures. Everything was guaranteed to fail.

In this case, the basic assumption was that a witch would float while a non-witch would sink and drown. It would have been simple enough to just throw the test sample into a pool of clean water with a known and controlled pH. If they couldn't swim underwater, they were a witch. If they floundered around thrashed about, they were either a witch or at least a good candidate for swimming lessons.

Since the local church was deemed to be the competition of witchcraft, they added an unrealistic time limit. Instead of waiting for the floatation test to culminate, they attempted to accelerate the test by holding the test sample under water. The results were predictable. Everyone drowned.

This is terrible QA testing, but is very similar to battery testing. If you give the battery time to discharge properly, it will simply heat up the load and incinerate everything nearby. However, if you attempt to accelerate the process by shorting the battery, you're more likely to have an explosion.

Were we to suffer an infestation of witches today, the methodology would be quite different. Various industry trade organizations would immediately engage in a turf war to inscribe the necessary test standards. One is selected by virtue of the size of the consortium they can collect, the conglomeration of academics, pundits, industry burnouts, and newly minted engineers meet to hammer out a suitable standard for witch testing. Each group contributes its best practices and patented rituals. After years of expense accounts, travel costs, voluminous email, and multiple votes, a miserable compromise is reached. The standard is then published and sold an exorbitant cost. Of course, by then it's too late to do anything about the witch infestation, so the test procedure expands to include warlocks, werewolves, vampires, and such. By this time, researchers have discovered various security holes and inconsistencies in the original test procedures, and amendments and annexes are inscribed.

Sometimes, I wonder if the Salem witch hunt method wasn't all that bad.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Thanks. At least I can get something right today.

That would be considered a vacation. I'm currently at home, surrounded by tons of paperwork, various home projects, an ever growing pile of eWaste candidates, and innumerable delayed chores. Instead of doing all that, I've been slogging my way through the various IEEE-802.11 documents, wondering what were they thinking when they threw that mess together. Engineers writing like lawyers? Anyway, I needed some comic relief to delay turning my brain to mush.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

I got one at a local dollar store that works fine for AA, AAA, C, D, 9V and you can even test flat 'button' batteries with it. It's a very cheap looking device but it works. It says YUANSHIN on the front, whatever that means.

Reply to
Tuner Watson

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