Involvement:Expert (understands the inner workings) - Ownership:more than 1 month
Pros:
-The price...can't beat it.
-Charges almost any type of battery.
-small size.
-comes with lots of different cables.
-It does have data capabilities, if you have the technical ability to get it working.
Cons:
-USB port is not a USB port. DO NOT PLUG IT INTO YOUR COMPUTER.
-overall accuracy of the this charger is not very good.
-Balancing not as accurate as it should be, but it is better than not balancing at all.
-lack of an insulator between the bottom of the circuit board and the case could lead to short circuits. The ends of the components are very close to the case.
-as mentioned before, there is a transistor that should be thermally bonded to the case and it is not.
OtherThoughts:
I bought this charger because it was supposed to have a USB port. It turns out the data on the "USB" port is actually TTL serial data @ 9600 baud. I did get manage to get the data from this charger to work. I used a USB to serial UART device (many companies use these to program their speed controllers, ca$tle, xcel3r1n, h3xtr0nic etc.) based on the CP2102 chip. I then used a freeware program called LogView2, using the Bantam A6 device setting, to display the data. It works quite nicely, though I have not tested the software extensively yet.
Bottomline:
If you need a charger and can't afford a really good one, this one is a good buy.
Good field charger for the price.
Involvement:Expert (understands the inner workings) - Ownership:more than 1 month
Pros:-The price...can't beat it.
Cons:-Charges almost any type of battery.
-small size.
-comes with lots of different cables.
-It does have data capabilities, if you have the technical ability to get it working.
-USB port is not a USB port. DO NOT PLUG IT INTO YOUR COMPUTER.
OtherThoughts:-overall accuracy of the this charger is not very good.
-Balancing not as accurate as it should be, but it is better than not balancing at all.
-lack of an insulator between the bottom of the circuit board and the case could lead to short circuits. The ends of the components are very close to the case.
-as mentioned before, there is a transistor that should be thermally bonded to the case and it is not.
I bought this charger because it was supposed to have a USB port. It turns out the data on the "USB" port is actually TTL serial data @ 9600 baud. I did get manage to get the data from this charger to work. I used a USB to serial UART device (many companies use these to program their speed controllers, ca$tle, xcel3r1n, h3xtr0nic etc.) based on the CP2102 chip. I then used a freeware program called LogView2, using the Bantam A6 device setting, to display the data. It works quite nicely, though I have not tested the software extensively yet.
Bottomline:If you need a charger and can't afford a really good one, this one is a good buy.