Is my battery shot? (and triton help)
 

I just got my triton today and am trying it out on my hummingbird birdseed batteries. They are 7 cell 8.4 volt 600mah nimh batteries. I used the discharge then charge feature and the battery didnt discharge at all, must have been dead already. Then charged it at 1.2A and it peaked at 417mah. Is the battery bad or am I programing the charger wrong?

I just finished charging the second and it peaked at 379mah. I also noticed that both times after the charge the batteries themselves were making little clicking noises. I dont imagine that is good?

Another question. It will not discharge these batteries. I set it up as the manual says, get it to start discharge, then it immediatly stops. Why?

Hmmnnn.. the birdseed pack is NiMH. Is this a new pack? NiMH will behave this way if you don't initially slow charge to "form" them.

OTOH, Clicking can't be good... were they hot to the touch?

What current settings are you using? How long are your leads?

Jim.

No these are old packs, and they may have been over charged a couple times on the wall charger. They were quite warm, but not hot hot. I was charging at 1.2amps or 2C. The leads are quite long. The wall charger came with a thing like a tx lead that plugs into a tx lead to jst converter. So, I am using my tx charger lead plugged into this converter, so maybe a couple feet lead.

I still dont understand why it wont discharge the batteries though. The discharge function worked fine on one of my nicads.

What do you mean by "won't discharge"? Is there an error?

I've found the Triton to be finicky about lead lenght and contact quality...

I've used my Triton for my Birdseed pack without a problem... I don't think I've ever exceeded 1C though....

I think I figured it out. I was reading through the manual again and it said that some tx's wont let you discharge, so I thought that maybe the connector that I am using is not allowing it to discharge. So I hooked up a different connection and it will discharge now.

Another question on the same topic. I am trying to cycle my 6xas battery, but again it wont let me discharge, so im trying to take out the battery, but the lead for it is a different end and inside the tx. Do I just take off the back of the tx and pull off the lead?

Huh? I though we were talking about the birdseed pack in your hummingbird? :?:

Yes.

It is possible to defeat the diode preventing discharge but, I wouldn't recommend it unless you're comfortable with board level repair.

I have defeated all my Futaba's diodes. Even though it voids warranty I still went ahead. If yours is new I would not reccommend it but to me it was a real pain in the butt for checking the packs. I have 4 trans and I cycle them once a month and get quite good life out of them.
The method I used was to solder a jumper across the diode on the board. You only need a short piece of wire, resin core solder and a 25watt iron. It usually is located near the charging connecter by the battery. Mine I believe was only about 1/4" long and snip the ends off the jumper and use a magnifying glass to make sure you don't make any solder bridges. The diode is on there so you can't reverse the polarity when charging but it makes a problem when trying to use any type of charger that reads the return voltage.
John :wink:

Yes I am. But you know the charger that came with the hummingbird? How it is a tx lead into a black box then to the jst connector? There must be a diode in that box that wasnt letting me discharge. I am using the same leads as I used with my hobbico quick field charger, so I just use the tx lead into that box, then into the battery, its fine for charging, but wont discharge.