Good morning All and a happy New Year Apologies for my absence for a few weeks. Um I had a bad cold. Maybe flu might even be covered. There was a very faint line on the lateral flow test, but I'm not sure which it was anyway.

Alternatives to alkaline batteries because alkaline batteries have their problems. One of the main ones is that they leak and the other thing is in some instances they can be a little bit under voltage. Take for example this clock. so this clock came from Lidl It's radio controlled so it receives uh information from the Cumbria transmitter.

I Think it is the Msf and you can see on the back here it says Msf so it is um, receiving the the UK signal. Um, but this clock has done a few odd things with an alkaline AA in it. There was a time where it it just sat one hour ahead of where it should have been and I thought well maybe that's Germany time and it's picking up DCF but I don't think it was because this is an Msf only clock. So I think it was just I don't know.

low voltage or something on the battery. Um, and yes, it was just one hour ahead. And then the other thing it does when the battery gets very low is that the clock goes into a sort of Fast Wind mode. I'll put a battery in and show that actually.

so I've just put an alkaline in and it does this thing and it will Fast Wind Well on this one, alternately the second hand and the other pair of hands until it gets to 12 o'clock and then it sits there and waits for the Msf signal. Stepper mode is quite weak. You can see that it really struggles to lift the second hand up when it's on the left hand side, has much less difficulty when it's falling back. This is slightly tilted up when it's falling back down on the right hand side.

Ah well. I Thought it was going to stop at 12 o'clock for some inexplicable reason. It hasn't and it's carrying on going. This is a very flat alkaline battery I Think maybe that's it.

So I'm on battery. University Now the 1.5 1.6 volt lithium primary cell looks like it's going to be a lithium ion disulfide and the three volt lithium coin cell. It looks to me like it's probably the Lithium manganese, dioxide, but of course these two have different uh Vault cell voltages. So this um battery's gone flat because the clock had stopped.

I've got a few of these, but the trouble is they're all dated 2021 and I Got these about 10 years ago and they do tend to have a 10-year shelf life. So I've probably got these back in 2010 or something like that. Um, but I'm going to work through these and use them in this clock because this clock's just very sensitive. It doesn't seem to like alkaline cells.

Ah That's interesting. I Put the new Lithium in and it's doing something slightly different. The second hand has stopped and uh, it looks like it's going to be winding the hands to 12 o'clock So this does look like it's working better. I Just feel that the alkaline this is an old one I Think this is pretty flat.

Um, it may be just that it's so low in voltage that the microcontroller in here just isn't running properly, right? So the next item is this: Now this is a temperature and humidity sensor. but I Want one of these things to live out in the shed? So of course it's subject to extremes of temperature and alkalines don't seem to like that much either because I've had these temperature and humidity sensors and the alkaline batteries have leaked because they do have a tendency to leak these things so on or in this one this time I have gone for that's a bit tight yes I have gone for nickel Zinc N-i-z-n high voltage 1.6 volts and yes, these do seem to work better. they're rechargeable. um I Also want to use rechargeables where I can.

but the problem with this thing is if you put nickel metal hydrides in because they're only 1.2 volts, they're about 1.25 When you've um, when they sort of initially settle, this thing has a low battery warning and I can't remember whether it can be shut off? Possibly. But anyway, when the battery gets low, it sends a message to my phone and that puts up a notification. Well, it typically does it at three o'clock in the morning, which is really annoying. So what I want is something rechargeable, which these Nickel Zinc batteries are.

Now, you do need a proper or a Nickel Zinc compatible charger for these things, but they do hold a higher voltage, so it will hold this battery symbol at fully charged. probably until close to the point where these things are going to do their final drop in voltage when they're pretty much depleted. Now the Isdt C4 charger does Nickel Zinc, so let's put a couple of them in. Uh, they're showing up as oh, can you see that they're showing up as 1.7 volts currently.

So they are considerably higher in voltage than uh, Alkaline, and certainly higher than Nickel Metal Hydride. Now I Could let this attempt an auto, but I won't I'll go into that. And so this does Lithium-ion nickel Metal hydride, nickel Zinc which are these they call cadmium and a loop whatever that might be and Lifeboat 4 and Lithium high voltage, which are the ones that go up to 4.35 volts. So these Nickel zinc uh, solve the problem of the middle of the night low battery error messages and in my experience, rechargeables that just don't leak as much as alkalines.

But I I think I have seen an inner loop leak. So they do leak. but um, Alkalines are just notorious for leaking. Now another example of a different battery chemistry to solve a particular problem is this thermal imaging camera.

Uh, let me switch it on. Actually I think, press and hold that. yeah, thermal imager. And the problem with this is that it's designed for alkaline cells.

And so if you put a nickel metal hydride rechargeables in, even when they're fully charged, this thing says, oh, they're only half charged and then long before you've used all the juice in the cells, this is saying sorry, there's no power left and it shuts off. Probably you've only used a third of the nickel metal hydride energy in those cells. So I've gone with a different solution here and these are lithium ion phosphate now, of course. Lithium-ion phosphate.

Um, 3.2 volts nominal. so it's twice the voltage that we're looking for. 1.6 So what I've got in here? Uh, right. I need something to get these out? Yeah, So what I've got in here are two of the Uh 700 milliamp hour lithium-ion phosphate cells and also two of these which are just dummy batteries.

They're just connectors. So this is just, um, I mean it feels extremely light. It feels like aluminum. just simply a zero voltage.

It's not a battery. It's nothing. It's just a piece of wire. Uh, just a packer.

Really to pack this out. So in here, really? we've only got two cells at 3.2 volts. So that gives 6.4 volts, Which is approximately what this thing runs on. And this solution of using lithium-ion phosphate has completely solved the problem with this particular device.

No longer does it shut off prematurely and say there's no energy left in the cells when actually there's quite a lot. So you've got a nice solid full battery icon there because it's getting more than it would be getting even with alkaline cells. So it's actually doing anything. Yes, it is.

seeing my hand. Very slow and very low resolution. Is this Ht02? Now there is one other AAA alternative and it's these things. These are X-tar Um, AA 1.5 volt.

but these are lithium ion rechargeable batteries Now of course. Inside here there is a cell which is lithium ion Now it might be a 3.7 volt lithium or it could possibly be lithium ion phosphate it doesn't actually say. And then there's a little circuit board which has a butt converter which takes the voltage from the three point something down to 1.5 volts and these are quite stable at 1.5 volts. Let's get a DVM on there.

All right, let's try one of these if I can get the probes on there. and uh, yeah, I mean that's pretty much bang on isn't it? Oh come on, probes, 1.498 volts. let's just try the other one and that's a little bit over 1.5 but pretty close. So the terminal voltage on these things is it always 1.5 volts? Well, hmm because I Noticed that if I put these things in this isdt C4 One of the things it does is it shows you the voltage of the cell immediately after putting them in, but without actually charging it.

So take a look at this. This is saying 3.3 volts and 3.3 volts on the other cell. So for whatever reason, this battery charger has triggered the cells into showing their internal cell voltage and not the 1.5 volts that they would normally present. Certainly to my DVM oh, that looks like it might start automatically charging if I'm not careful actually.

no. I don't think this will start automatically charging as defaulted back to there. But um, now this 3.3 volts, what do we think it is? Could it be lithium ion phosphate? Um, or of course it could possibly be lithium ion nickel, manganese Cobalt that sort of thing through a diode, that's another possibility. And with the Uh Buck converter circuitry that's inside these things, possibly we are seeing the voltage through a diode.

The fact is I don't know. Now one question interested me: could I charge these in this charger which is not designed for charging these 1.5 volt Lithiums. So these xtar, um, Lithium 1.5 volt rechargeables came with this battery charger. Now, this battery charger obviously recognizes these things and will charge them correctly, but this is not very verbose.

It doesn't tell you much, it's just got a red light when it's charging and a green light when it's finished. I Was wondering whether I could charge them with this battery charger and then get all the graphs and whatnot that the C4 shows you. I Suppose what I could do is tell the Um charger that this is a lithium ion phosphate a life Pro 4 cell so that it doesn't push it above I think 3.65 isn't it the highest for Life Pro 4.. So I could try that at a low current and just see what happens.

So if I do charge at, say half an amp, we could try that. Let's start that going and just see what sort of voltage we get. Uh, it doesn't like the other cell. Now let's take that one out.

Oh why didn't that charge? Oh well, I've just reset that up and set it going and it's saying charge done. So perhaps it got to 3.65 volts and and just said okay, that lithium ion phosphate cell is full. so maybe it's not a lithium ion phosphate. Let's try it as a lithium ion now.

I should point out that this is probably not a brilliant idea. uh, using a battery charger not intended to charge these 1.5 volt lithium ion rechargeables. but I was just sort of intrigued as to what would happen. So let's try it as a lithium ion charge.

We'll do it at half an um uh start and give it a few. Oh well, that shot up to over four volts and it's also saying it's done So yeah. I've got a feeling that this C4 battery charger isn't going to be able to successfully charge these. So yeah, you would have to use the dedicated charger that came with them.

Now, there are various different makers of these 1.5 volt lithium and rechargeables, and of course each manufacturer will have their own charger. but I'm not sure whether there's one particular standard for these things or whether you really need to match the cells to a branded charger. So if your device is problematic with alkaline and also problematic with rechargeable nickel metal hydrides most often due to their low terminal voltage, then try Lithium 1.6 volt primary cells. or you could use a nickel Zinc which uh, well, these showed up as 1.7 when these were charging I think they went over two volts, but of course they settled back probably 1.7 1.8 I don't know exactly you can look it up on battery University Um, lithium ion phosphate 3.2 volts.

You will need the dummy cell so you're not going to be able to use these in any device that only takes one cell. and or you could use these lithium-ion rechargeables that present a 1.5 volt terminal voltage, but you probably have to have the correct charger for these. And then of course there are these These are called fourteen five hundreds because presumably they're 14 mil diameter and 50 millimeters long. Now, these are lithium ion Mnmcs, so it's very unlikely you're going to be able to use these in anything that's designed to take alkalines because these have a 3.7 volt voltage nominal.

When they're fully charged, of course, that can be 4 volts or more, so you'd have to be very careful putting these in anything which was uh, designed for alkaline because it'll probably blow up. But yeah, lots of varieties. Now some of my devices um, take Triple A's and I doubt you can get this sort of variety of different chemistries in Triple A's correct me if I'm wrong, but in Double A's yes, there's quite a lot of choice. Cheerio.