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If you're still having problems with the lead-acid battery, you might want to try swapping it out for NiCads at some point. The battery packs from cordless dril
by anon_cow1111 8y ago
If you're still having problems with the lead-acid battery, you might want to try swapping it out for NiCads at some point. The battery packs from cordless drills often contain these; they're just a bunch of 1.2v cells in series so you can always adjust the voltage manually.
- driverdan 8y agoDo you mean NiMH? NiCads are pretty outdated at this point. The cost of 18650s is so low now that I'd skip NiMH too. You can get free 18650 cells by going to your local landfill / dump and grabbing discarded laptop battery packs. They typically have a few bad cells with the rest reusable.
- leggomylibro 8y agoNiMH is a fantastic technology, but there are still advantages to using NiCad. NiMH batteries are notoriously fickle because it is very difficult to detect their charge state based on their voltage. Many chargers will just charge at something like 1.5V / 1A for an hour or two and expect you to drain the batteries between charges. NiCad batteries handle 'trickle charging' much better than NiMH ones, which usually degrade significantly with overcharging. So NiCads are still used in places like alarm backups, power tools, or off-grid applications where they might be connected to a charging circuit for long periods of time between discharges. And 18650 cells are great, but I would think carefully about using li-ion or li-po chemistries in areas where they will be exposed to the elements and unsupervised.