sorry for novice question, but is it possible to set Charge Voltage to 4.3v for one LiIon battery. I have Sanyo 16650 that needs this voltage. In FMA software i see only max 4.25v option.... please help....firmware update? mod?

it looks like advisable feature of "multi- chemistry " does not really work..... even such a small parameter change is not possible..... what a pity.. official support keeps silence, community too .....

I have seen this increased charge to voltage request several times in the past. These cells are still fairly new it seems and were released long after the lower charge to voltage was well established. Most chargers have a limited amount of available memory and thus can not always be updated for all new battery chemistries which come along.

The PowerLab chargers were updated to allow a max of 4.3V per cell in the LiPoly mode . This is 0.1V above the estabilished standard and will lead to greatly deminished life / cycles but perhaps would be a work around solution for these new Sanyo LiIon battery.

FYI There is a new charger (different brand) which does allow up to 4.35 for LiIo so who knows perhaps FMA will follow suit.

Charles

thanks for the reply, i hope that FMA comes up with some solution for this simple request
that will not be a new device but a firmware update. Updateable firmware is good thing but worth nothing if is not used
any ideas if it is possible to customize firmware?

Originally Posted by petekol

thanks for the reply, i hope that FMA comes up with some solution for this simple request
that will not be a new device but a firmware update. Updateable firmware is good thing but worth nothing if is not used
any ideas if it is possible to customize firmware?

Hi:

I would like to let you know that our concept of Open Architecture Presets, which began in the Multi4 and continued on into the PowerLab series of Battery Workstations was developed precisely to make the products easily expandable to accomodate new chemistries, add or alter existing parameters, etc. Since PowerLab hit the streets, we have added a number of new presets to the library, some of which support new chemistries. One example is Higher C LiPo batteries. Another is the High Power Accurate Charge presets (charge and storage) which are a cross between the original Accurate Charge and the High Power Charge presets. We've also added new presets for different kinds of Pb batteries as well as the NiZn chemistry.

We were not aware of this Sanyo 16650 you sited in your original post. So we looked it up. Here is a review of the cell someone did in the UK I believe:

http://lygte-info.dk/review/batterie...Red)%20UK.html

Within this document is the following sentence:

The battery has a over voltage protection circuit and this circuit is for 4.2 volt cells, i.e. the charge is stoppend when the battery reach 4.3 volt and the CV phase is missing.

Based on the above, we get the impression that this cell is not really designed to be charged above 4.2v and that there is actually a protection circuit that will activate at 4.3v. Normally, a protection circuit in a battery goes "open" at the indicated voltage. Therefore, even if the charge voltage were set to 4.3v per cell, the charger would error out when the protection circuit kicked in.

So, at this time, unless we have more concrete evidence that this cell is intended to be charged to 4.3v with traditional CC/CV charging method, we will not provide a new chemistry at this time. The reasons why are:

1) The charger will error out if you charge this cell to 4.3V per cell.

2) If we provide a new chemistry that will allow charge to 4.3V, there will be a lot of guys charging their LiPo's to 4.3V and ruining their batteries.

Sorry, we're going to have to pass on this request at this time.

Tim Marks

thank for the reply, Tim

i was not aware of the history of Open Architecture Presets and that FMA covered so many new types of the batteries.

i just wonder why you should pass on such a small change in charge voltage...
you can't make all things 100% safe - knifes are not forbidden because people can cut their fingers.....

second wonder for me is why you look to some UK guy page to find spec of Sanyo battery.... i have not protected version of the cell so i want to charge it properly....

Regards,
Petr

Originally Posted by petekol

thank for the reply, Tim

i was not aware of the history of Open Architecture Presets and that FMA covered so many new types of the batteries.

i just wonder why you should pass on such a small change in charge voltage...
you can't make all things 100% safe - knifes are not forbidden because people can cut their fingers.....

second wonder for me is why you look to some UK guy page to find spec of Sanyo battery.... i have not protected version of the cell so i want to charge it properly....

Regards,
Petr

Hi:

First off, I kind of messed up on my post above. As Charles was kind enough to point out, the PL series already allow charge voltage up to 4.30V, so problem solved for you. Just use any of the existing LiPo presets. I had totally forgotten about this change we made. I think it was in response to inquiries from the R/C car community.

I see your point in your second paragraph. While I didn't list it before, another thing we always need to weigh is the number of requests for certain enhancements. It's hard to justify engineering time for a single request; particularly when that request is borderline on introducing potential problems such as higher-then-normal charge rate settings. I hope you can appreciate that. But in your case, it's rather a moot point, because the capability is already there. I'm embarrassed to admit I did not double-check this when I posted. If you are not able to access the 4.30V, you'll need to make sure you're on the latest firmware version, and then likely issue a Factory Restore on your unit (save down any custom presets first!).

Finally, I only referenced the UK write-up because that's what came up on the top of a Google search and it seemingly gave us the information we were looking for.

Thanks and sorry again for the mis-information. My bad!

Tim Marks

thank you Tim, Factory Restore did the trick !!!
but.... i get a error that charge voltage should be <=4.25v, how to workaround???

As I posted above

The PowerLab chargers were updated to allow a max of 4.3V per cell in the LiPoly mode . This is 0.1V above the estabilished standard and will lead to greatly deminished life / cycles but perhaps would be a work around solution for these new Sanyo LiIon battery.

My guess is that the Cellpro Multi4 4 will not go above 4.25. I have a CP4 but it has been on loan to my son for around 4 years now but never have had a Cellpro Multi4 so not really all that familiar with all of its' limitations.

Charles

Originally Posted by everydayflyer

As I posted above



My guess is that the Cellpro Multi4 4 will not go above 4.25. I have a CP4 but it has been on loan to my son for around 4 years now but never have had a Cellpro Multi4 so not really all that familiar with all of its' limitations.

Charles

Hi Guys:

I think this is a bug and I'm trying to get it fixed. I think what happened was, at some point in the past, the Multi4 and the PowerLab units were altered to increase the max per cell voltage from 4.25V up to 4.30V. I'm virtually 100% sure the firmwares did not need to be altered, as the units themselves do whatever the CCS and preset information command them to do. So I think this is a situation whereby the CCS pull-downs were altered to allow the user to select 4.30V, but in the case of the Multi4, the rules that govern the Errors in the CCS were not altered to correspond with this change. I double-checked that both PowerLab CCS do allow the change to 4.30V without erroring out. It doesn't make any sense to allow you to set up to 4.30V in the Multi4 CCS, but then error out so you can't actually save the changes.

If I am correct, what will happen, is I'll report back in this thread that a new CCS has been released to correct this problem. Furthermore, I'm guessing all you'll need to do is launch the Multi4 CCS a couple times to make sure you get the latest version and you'll probably be good to go. I doubt you'll have to update firmware, but if you do, I'll tell you.

Sorry for the inconvenience. There's something like 100k lines of code in the CCS applications, and so overlooking something isn't all that difficult to do.

It's also interesting to note that this is the first time anybody's reported this issue, which tells me that no one is actually trying to charge a Li battery to 4.30V using the Multi4, and I don't know when the range was actually increased. But I still don't recommend charging any Li pack to 4.30V per cell, regardless of whether the chargers will let you. As I said, even in the case of this new cell which has a protection device in the cells, when the protection device opens, you'll likely receive a Safety Code on the charger when attempting to charge; probably something like Pack Disconnected before Charge Complete.

Tim Marks

i hope to see the bug fix soon, thank you!
some gui improvements like window maximization support are also welcome -)

Pete