Off Topic: Battery Performance

S

slurp

Senior Member
I'm refreshing a few old picaxe projects and robots in preparation for http://www.robotchallenge.org/ in a few months time. Whilst digging around for standard AA battery performance I found http://www.batteryshowdown.com/

Bitbox produced some test kit for batteries and ran "high" and "low" drain tests on 40+ different alkaline, lithium and zinc-chloride batteries. I found it interesting (and useful).... it seams my wife was right Ikea are best value for money ;)

Best regards,
Colin
 
fernando_g

fernando_g

Senior Member
Very interesting info Collin.

I've sometimes mused to build a similar dataloger using a PICAXE (with several ADC channels).

The only thing I disagree on the study would be the sentence:
"As a general rule of thumb, a lightbulb will be about half as bright at 0.8V as 1.5V."

With the lower filament temperature, so much of the radiation has moved down to IR, that I would guess it is lower than 1/4 of the brightness.
 
premelec

premelec

Senior Member
My handy Chicago Miniature Lamp Works slide rule says candlepower factor = (V/V1)^(3.5) or around .125 [1/8] in this case - with a life factor of 1296 x = (V1/V)^(12)....
 
Pongo

Pongo

Senior Member
Very interesting. Seems like every corner store in the UK has its own branded batteries lol.

I was surprised to see the "low drain" current was 200 mA, I thought I had hit the high drain link by mistake. Maybe I'm just too kind to my batteries?
 
premelec

premelec

Senior Member
@fernando_g - I still find one of the most reliable MaHr tests for single cells is to put an appropriate resistor [to whatever current you want...] across the battery and put a quartz battery clock running on the loaded battery which stops running at .9 volts and record how long the clock runs. Some of the electronic MaHr methods seem to have quirks perhaps from intermittent battery voltage noise [I have a commercial unit that's supposed test by charge and discharge but gives uneven results]. The clocks are about $1. at a thrift store... :) Having to record it manually is a nuisance...
 
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