The Accucell. You know the one.

So after 2 years, it was finally time to break out the Accucell 8150. It had the coveted capacity guage, very important for measuring the total range of a battery. It was always assumed it couldn't charge less than 3S because it only had balancing pins for 3S & the crummy Passport charger wouldn't charge unless the battery was plugged into the balancing pins.

It turned out the internet said it would charge all the way down to 1S & it didn't require the balancing pins to be plugged in. Balancing was optional. It would balance 2S by plugging the 1st 2 pins into any of the balancing headers. The ideal use was in balancing mode, so the next problem was moving the balancing header closer to the charge header & providing a pin strip which could plug into any battery.




Opening it the way the internet recommended broke 1 of the tact buttons. Half the circuit was dedicated to just balancing.




The balancing pins were all in parallel.


It was just a matter of desoldering the right angle header & putting in a ribbon cable. The tact button was hot glued back together until the next time it needed to be opened.


Fully functional, in a test charge it showed the total capacity as 32mAh. Not sure what happens if the balancing pins are reversed. Unfortunately, the wall wart can only go to 3A so charging 5A batteries will continue to be epic events.








The e-flite of 9 years was finally retired. There might be a way to use the Passport as a 6A wall wart for the Accucell.