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I've gone through more swollen LiPo pouch batteries at my CA desert property than I can count, fortunately none have caught fire. The cheap ZTE devices in part

I've gone through more swollen LiPo pouch batteries at my CA desert property than I can count, fortunately none have caught fire. The cheap ZTE devices in particular seem especially bad at keeping the thermals within a safe range. Even with a 100% full battery they'll let the electrolyte boil if left plugged in for their charging logic to do as it wishes in a hot environment. What's so frustrating is practically every consumer electronics device seems to now have some form of LiPo pouch cells in them. I wish it were normal for manufacturers to offer chunkier variants using NiMH AA/AAA cells to consumers. Instead I've been resorting to "industrial" stuff having no battery at all like the Gl-Inet X300B [0] I eventually ended up with. For a while I used a hacked together pack of four NiMH AAs with a battery board stolen from the LiPo on a ZTE/AT&T hotspot that kept swelling its pack. The battery board kept the device happy enough to believe it had the proper LiPo connected. The now external AAs stayed charged more-or-less, and didn't care how hot the ambient temps got through summer. But it was a sprawling mess of wires, soldered AAs arranged like an 80s-era RC-12L saddle-pack, kept ~together with Duck tape. [0] https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-x300b/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-x300b/

ed25519FUUU 3y ago
Does NiMH handle overcharging better than lithium ion? I can't really find cheap charge controller ICs for NiMH batteries.
- invalidator 3y ago
  NiMH handles gentle overcharging gracefully. They generate a little bit of hydrogen, and the battery has an internal catalyst to convert it back. It can do that indefinitely as long as it's at a low rate. When aggressively overcharged they may rupture, but they don't go up in flames like Li-ion does.
aredox 3y ago
Why go back to NiMH when there is LiFePO4?
- pengaru 3y ago
  Because I gave zero fucks for how actually useful the battery life was, I just wanted the hotspot to turn on again after the LiPo swelled up so much the pogo pins lost contact. NiMH AAs were onhand in abundance for flashlights. They had enough voltage to let the thing turn on and weren't going to catch fire, problem solved. Left it that way for years.

ed25519FUUU 3y ago

Does NiMH handle overcharging better than lithium ion? I can't really find cheap charge controller ICs for NiMH batteries.

invalidator 3y ago
NiMH handles gentle overcharging gracefully. They generate a little bit of hydrogen, and the battery has an internal catalyst to convert it back. It can do that indefinitely as long as it's at a low rate. When aggressively overcharged they may rupture, but they don't go up in flames like Li-ion does.

aredox 3y ago

Why go back to NiMH when there is LiFePO4?

pengaru 3y ago
Because I gave zero fucks for how actually useful the battery life was, I just wanted the hotspot to turn on again after the LiPo swelled up so much the pogo pins lost contact. NiMH AAs were onhand in abundance for flashlights. They had enough voltage to let the thing turn on and weren't going to catch fire, problem solved. Left it that way for years.