So, I bought this nifty Coleman "Quad" lantern for camping this summer. It has 4 detachable segments that you can use as a flashlight.
The main base takes eight D cell batteries. Each of the four segments contains three AAA 600mAh NiMH rechargeable batteries, which supposedly gives a run time of 1.5 hours each. When you place the segments on the base, they automatically charge.
Anyway.. My first thought was that 600mAh was kinda wimpy; I know there are 1000mAh AAA cells on the market. So I did a little research and found some good candidates for beefing things up a bit. Even though the cost wouldn't be that much, I decided to just go ahead and use the lantern as is for a while, since I had already spent $50 on it. But I figured I would go ahead and balance the batteries. May as well try and get the most performance I can out of it, eh?
So I labeled them 1 through 12, and began analyzing them with my Maha C9000.
View the results here
It's interesting to note that the capacity of the batteries is still going up. Apparently NiMH cells don't reach their full capacity until 3-4 cycles. I may do more than 4 cycles, if they show significant improvement on the 4th cycle
Yes, I'm a nerd. This is what I do in my spare time.
The main base takes eight D cell batteries. Each of the four segments contains three AAA 600mAh NiMH rechargeable batteries, which supposedly gives a run time of 1.5 hours each. When you place the segments on the base, they automatically charge.
Anyway.. My first thought was that 600mAh was kinda wimpy; I know there are 1000mAh AAA cells on the market. So I did a little research and found some good candidates for beefing things up a bit. Even though the cost wouldn't be that much, I decided to just go ahead and use the lantern as is for a while, since I had already spent $50 on it. But I figured I would go ahead and balance the batteries. May as well try and get the most performance I can out of it, eh?
So I labeled them 1 through 12, and began analyzing them with my Maha C9000.
View the results here
It's interesting to note that the capacity of the batteries is still going up. Apparently NiMH cells don't reach their full capacity until 3-4 cycles. I may do more than 4 cycles, if they show significant improvement on the 4th cycle
Yes, I'm a nerd. This is what I do in my spare time.
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