Battery help please

[FullFlavorPike]

Originally Posted by YakDout

Yep testing the output of the charger with voltmeter should work

My thought is that perhaps the thing is only throwing 3.2V at 18mA or something. That would be an easy diagnosis.

I may be wrong about this, but isn't the "battery charged" indicator light just th product of some kind of diode responding to the current in the battery? When it meets a certain threshold, it shuts off power to the battery and flashes that green light.

Depending on how the charger is actually wired, there could be any number of ways in which it could fail to charge the battery, or provide a kind of false positive for reading the battery's state of charge.

My (admittedly inexpert) guess is that the easiest way to wire the charger would be that it responds to the battery's charge as compared to the current coming out of the charger. When the battery's charge is less than the charger's output, it charges, but if the charger's output is equal to or lesser than the battery's charge, it shuts down and flashes the CHARGED light. THe thing doesn't think, it just responds to the ratio of electrical forces between battery and charger. If the charger were outputting insufficient current, it would think the battery was charged, even if that were not the case.