Got my new discharger today, after accidentally reversing polarity and blowing up the old one. Here's another module that was taken all the way down to 3 volts, and trickle charged at .5A all night. Almost 5000MAH capacity, pretty darn good for 14 year old modules with almost 190k miles on them. This line is what you want to see, as you can see the voltage quickly drops at first as the excess charge beyond what the nominal voltage is bled off, followed by a smooth downward trend, and once it reaches the bottom of the nominal voltage, a sharp decline to 6 volts.
Interesting that you discharge didn't have a reverse polarity alarm? I mean I have fried a hobby charge once because I had headphones on and didn't hear the alarm... But @fach took it home and found the component it needed and repaired it. Anyways, I'd love to have a discharger that gives such a nice looking graph like that. Can you share a link to what you bought and how much?
This is what I bought: https://www.ebay.com/itm/333626507045 You may find some cheaper, but that had the fastest shipping (UPS). Nice thing about it...it can do 3 modules at once, very nice for discharging multiple modules at once. Only bad thing about it..it runs off the modules..and cuts out around 5.4V. So you have to use a hobby charger to take each module down to 3 volts. When it blew, one of the components blew smoke, and charred the top of the component, so no way of knowing what value I need, all I know is that it was a triac. My hobby charger alerts to reverse polarity, but not this. It's supposed to blow a fuse, which it did, a 40A one at that, but still ended up blowing a component. So I double check the wires before hooking up.
Wow... So glad SkyRC finally made a quality discharger like this. I might buy more than one! What kind of Operating System does the data port require? Windows? Apple? Linux? Sure hope I can get it to run on Linux!
Good thing I didn't buy the SkyRC discharger In Jan 22, was $129, price is better on Ebay for $89. SkyRC Battery Discharger suitable for Prius Modules? | PriusChat Classic SysAdmin: How to Install and Use Wine to Run Windows Applications on Linux - Linux Foundation Easily run Windows software on Linux with Bottles! ⋅ Bottles (usebottles.com)
I am debating if a module tests to at least 4,000MAh if there is any point in running another discharge cycle? That's 60 percent capacity.
Inexpensive equipment like this isn't going to give an accurate measurement... Just use the best modules as best as you can tell.
Here is the numbers so far from today's discharging, prior numbers are after the modules were discharged/charged TWICE down to 6 volts. 2163-4728 4009-4643 2204-4406 2190-4013 2756-4020. As you can see there is a clear benefit to discharging down to 3 volts.
Yeah, back then I didn't know this discharger sent the data to a computer so you could have a chart of each modules discharge health. I think when you shared it back then I thought it was a 250w charger, not a discharger, so my opinion of it was flawed. But now I look forward to getting one of these!
Last module just discharged at 5007MAh! Here's a shot of the work in progress, using a .61A current load to discharge each module to 3 volts. Yes, they won't be even when done, but I can then use the hobby charger to evenly discharge them. This just heavily speeds things up.
