So I've been trying to look into this a bit. I dug out my old Hobby King Eco-8. For NiMH I can manually charge and cycle it, but it seems PB is the only one with the cycling function. It's supposed to be able to cycle only NiMH and NiCD only but it seems its a common problem with these chargers to not do what they say. PB I can set a charge mah capacity and amps rate and then a max discharge voltage and cycle ammount. I don't remember seeing anything about a max charge voltage. I have no idea how it knows how to stop charging besides mah. But what I really wonder, if PB will work. is the charger not just voltage and amps and compatible with everything? I sit something like Ohms and resistance that batteries are actually charged differently? Do I have to use NiMH? I've been trying to look into it but it is somehow difficult to find as everything is a dang 30 minute YT video. My plan was to get 2 more chargers, B6AC 80 watt and then clamp up all the batteries in parallel and do a multiple number of cells per charger. I've heard to charge at 1C, not sure about discharge, 6500mah is the capacity, down to about 5.8v iirc, for the module. DL;DR do I have to use NiMH charge mode or can I use PB? What do you think of my so far plan in above paragraph? Thanks, Higgins909
You do not want to charge these batteries using a parallel setup. In a perfect world, if all the batteries were perfectly the same, the current would divide equally between them (however many you had in parallel) Unfortunately, no two batteries, especially old ones, have identical internal resistance, and you'll have no way to control how much charge current is going to any individual module. As for what mode to use when charging, if you desire to charge strictly to a mAh limit number, then it really doesn't matter what mode you use. The mode is what tells the control unit what characteristics to look for when it's checking to see if the battery is fully charged. The charger will charge for period of time, then stop charging to look at how the battery voltage behaves. If it doesn't meet criteria for being fully charged, the controller starts charging again. Repeats over and over until either the criteria is met, or it reaches the mAh limit.
