High Speed Ni-Cd Battery Charger


Alan and I built this high speed NiCd cell charger. It had the ability to charge up to 4 AA cells in 15minutes. Unlike most chargers, it also had the ability to charge just one cell if desired. The interface between the charging system and the computer was achieved with an 8 analog channel and 16 digital channel A/D converter. The sampling rate was about 5 Hz (as this is all that was required). The charger also had sophisticated programming to overcome early life failures (and failures due to misuse) of NiCd cells. Two methods of achieving this were through flash removal of whiskers and by deep discharge (to the voltage knee) of cells with memory effects. It incorporated an easy to use graphical interace (with a Star Trek format).