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Is there a charger that will do everything?

Jmhai3

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I have been looking for this but can’t find an exact answer.

Is there a charger that will charge all batteries? 12, 24, 36, and 48volt.
I see there is the desktop power tester that are infinitely adjustable but are they safe for all types? Lead acid, lipo, AGM, and etc.

I have miscellaneous tool batteries, 12, and 48 volt and would like to limit the stuff I have to maintain them when not in a system or setup.
 
The only difference between a power supply and a charger is that charger will have a charging profile or profiles that are suitable for various chemistries.

If you can adjust the voltage and current on a power supply it should be fine for any chemistry though it may require active monitoring on your part.
 
I have miscellaneous tool batteries, 12, and 48 volt and would like to limit the stuff I have to maintain them when not in a system or setup.
If the tool manufacturer has such a thing that would be it.
Otherwise for different brands and voltages I recommend sticking with the OEM equipment.

Next tool purchase limit yourself to existing infrastructure.
 
The only difference between a power supply and a charger is that charger will have a charging profile or profiles that are suitable for various chemistries.

If you can adjust the voltage and current on a power supply it should be fine for any chemistry though it may require active monitoring on your part.
I guess most people will have multiple charges for different voltage?
Depending on how things workout with the EG4 3k that is down waiting on SS support will need a way to charge the 48v lifepower battery if I go with just a inverter
 
Is there a charger that will charge all batteries? 12, 24, 36, and 48volt
I would not try it. I yesterday found one which I won’t link, but saw on Amazon or eBay when searching door 48 VDC chargers. Didn’t explain the voltages or different stages, but had a switch for all four voltages.

Without knowing the charge voltage, you’re taking a risk of it being for lead acid and bein too much for lithium.
 
I would not try it. I yesterday found one which I won’t link, but saw on Amazon or eBay when searching door 48 VDC chargers. Didn’t explain the voltages or different stages, but had a switch for all four voltages.

Without knowing the charge voltage, you’re taking a risk of it being for lead acid and bein too much for lithium.
I am finding out the same info. Will see what ends up happening with the AIO unit and see if replaced.
 
I am finding out the same info. Will see what ends up happening with the AIO unit and see if replaced.
The suggestion of an MPPT could work. THe flexmax was mentioned, but there are many MPPTs that have 12, 24, 36, or 48 VDC options. Prior to my top balance, I charged my Lithium cells in an 8S battery pack with a VIctron MPPT.

I had wanted to do a battery charger, but it did not show in time to build the battery.

I also have three times recently having to wake up a BMS with a trickle charge current from a power supply. One time was for a 24 VDC I over discharged, one was to bring a Ryobi Battery back to life, and the last was for a a 48 VDC battery pack. I have a 30 VDC adjustable power supply, but someone else woke up the 48 Volt battery for me.
 
I have been looking for this but can’t find an exact answer.

Is there a charger that will charge all batteries? 12, 24, 36, and 48volt.
I see there is the desktop power tester that are infinitely adjustable but are they safe for all types? Lead acid, lipo, AGM, and etc.

I have miscellaneous tool batteries, 12, and 48 volt and would like to limit the stuff I have to maintain them when not in a system or setup.
It would be great if there was a charger of this type and the current could be replaced correctly.
 
I am not sure this charger would be good to charge a battery. Without giving the actual charging voltages for each setting, I would avoid these multi-voltage chargers. If you could set them voltages like for an MPPT, that would be fine.

This Beelab is the one I did not want to link earlier. Not sure of the voltage it charges at, which I think could be too close to the max charging rate, especially if cells are unbalanced.

The two settings for each voltage are 12/24/36/48 for each voltage plus a high setting. The high setting seems like it equalizes, and the regular setting, not sure what the chargign voltage for each of those are. I would not want to charge above 14 volts per 12 volts for a lithium and preferably 13.6 volts so to avoid pushing too much voltage into an unbalanced high cell.
 
I am not sure this charger would be good to charge a battery. Without giving the actual charging voltages for each setting, I would avoid these multi-voltage chargers. If you could set them voltages like for an MPPT, that would be fine.

I had some of the same thoughts you do about a charger like this, if you read in the description and look at the zoomed pictures, the voltages (bank) are adjustable, and have a low, med, and high amps for all of those (but of course not able to fine tune absorption or float voltages). Not saying that would make it a 'good' charger, but perhaps someone would want to test one.

I come from the 80's when brands were a thing (a way to get an idea about quality to some extent), and when you saw brand names you never heard of before, it would kind of made me wonder about how good they were, where these days, most everything is made in a certain large country (with all brands you never heard of before), where quality can be hit or miss either way, where one almost has to try the thing out to know if it is a silver bullet or a throwaway item.


This Beelab is the one I did not want to link earlier. Not sure of the voltage it charges at, which I think could be too close to the max charging rate, especially if cells are unbalanced.

The two settings for each voltage are 12/24/36/48 for each voltage plus a high setting. The high setting seems like it equalizes, and the regular setting, not sure what the chargign voltage for each of those are. I would not want to charge above 14 volts per 12 volts for a lithium and preferably 13.6 volts so to avoid pushing too much voltage into an unbalanced high cell.

It might be the kind of charger where you don't just want to set on charge and walk away too long, rather to keep an eye on it, see how it's doing. I'm not really into this kind of charger, since they're trying to be a one-size-fits-all thing (where they often times suffer at doing any one thing optimally). I would definitely prefer to use a Victron MPPT over something like this, where I can set a battery bank voltage and custom chemistry charge profiles, all from bluetooth.

I rather just have different chargers to do specific things (for bench / shop use), like my 12v or 12v/24v chargers for shop / automotive, and the 48v charger with LFP / AGM / GEL / SLA profiles for bench charging in that range, and a digital power supply (like RD6018 or something) for doing anything in between that I don't commonly charge, or like for top balancing the 3.4v LFP cells or something. I have an RD6012 now, which was the max amps model they sold at the time, and I like it a lot for doing manual power supply stuff and custom charging (where I will babysit it, change it from absorption to float voltage or stop charging on it as needed manually)...
 
A handy option is a boost controller like the MPT-7210. This is all programmable and can do 72V @ 10A plus they are cheap.
 
This may be digressing away from the OPs original question, but I am looking at something like this 0 to 60 VDC, 0 to 5 amp power supply to wake up BMSs or to trickle charge a battery until it has enough charge to put on a charger.

Although it could charge any battery, at only 5 amps could take forever and it would not auto kick into the next stage.
 
Just a quick Google brought up some examples of chargers that can supposedly do all the voltages...



Example:


Or could just use a Victron MPPT charger like the 250|100 I have...
That does look like what I’m looking for. Will do more research into it.
Thanks.

I see some mention of mppt but looking for AC to DC for now.

I’m going to start another thread for the EG4-3K AIO unit issue, which looks like will need to go back to SS to repair.
 
Easy. I connect a laptop power supply to mine for charging. 19V in and whatever voltage greater then that out.
Can you explain more? It will adjust to the needed input for whatever battery it is connected too?

For everyone reading this post.
I did start a new thread for the AIO unit in the Solar equipment reviews and tech support forum section (all-in-One Systems). Please take a look if you are interested that issue
 
Just Google or search the forum. They are a simple charge controller that only works as a boost converter. Output voltage is always higher than input. I was using it with 18V panels on a 24V battery.

You can set the output voltage and current up to 72V @ 10A respectively. You don't have to use solar panels on the input. Any DC voltage source will do. I connect a Dell laptop brick to it to top off a small 24V battery I have.

Don't know the minimum input voltage but it would certainly let you charge 24 36 & 48V batteries from a common supply.
 
I wonder if one could just build a simple full wave DC rectifier circuit (4 diodes) to make a DC out of a 120v AC power source, and feed that into the PV input of your favorite MPPT charger (which has multiple battery bank voltage options), if the ripple wouldn't screw with it too much.


Example:
1703827166827.png
 
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I wonder if one could just build a simple full wave DC rectifier circuit (4 diodes) to make a DC out of a 120v AC power source, and feed that into the PV input of your favorite MPPT charger (which has multiple battery bank voltage options), if the ripple wouldn't screw with it too much.


Example:
View attachment 185642
I am planning on using a variable AC transformer that will take input of 120v AC and can transform to a range of 0 to 130 AC, this will feed a full bridge rectifier so I can vary the DC voltage peak once rectified. I will try unfiltered rectified AC into a 100v 60A MPPT in one of my all in one units.

120v AC transformed to 70 AC x 1.414 would give me a peak of 98.98v DC.

I’m worried about the ripple and its potential impact on the MPPT, however I am hopeful there is a capacitor on the input side of the MPPT to smooth things out? I never checked how they operate.
 
I am planning on using a variable AC transformer that will take input of 120v AC and can transform to a range of 0 to 130 AC, this will feed a full bridge rectifier so I can vary the DC voltage peak once rectified. I will try unfiltered rectified AC into a 100v 60A MPPT in one of my all in one units.

120v AC transformed to 70 AC x 1.414 would give me a peak of 98.98v DC.

I’m worried about the ripple and its potential impact on the MPPT, however I am hopeful there is a capacitor on the input side of the MPPT to smooth things out? I never checked how they operate.


Yeah, I wondered about how the ripple would affect the MPPT circuit too. You could always put your own capacitor, inductor, or choke filter on, maybe if you have a scope to check result and confirm the signal is fairly smooth after filtering...
 
Yeah, I wondered about how the ripple would affect the MPPT circuit too. You could always put your own capacitor, inductor, or choke filter on, maybe if you have a scope to check result and confirm the signal is fairly smooth after filtering...
Would you know to purchase to match the parameters? I have a standard bridge rectifier ordered and would want something able to be mated easily verses soldering anything.

I will test anything you suggest, or if you like me and don't know what to buy to meet the needs of the smoothing out the ripple. I ordered a cheap scope to see what is what for this test.
 

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Would you know to purchase to match the parameters? I have a standard bridge rectifier ordered and would want something able to be mated easily verses soldering anything.

I will test anything you suggest, or if you like me and don't know what to buy to meet the needs of the smoothing out the ripple. I ordered a cheap scope to see what is what for this test.

The main thing is to buy the parts that can support the max voltages they will be exposed to, and also the max current of the circuit. I am not an electronics engineer, just a home hobbyist who's fixed a few random broken electronics. I've built a rectifier for a home project before, it was relatively low amperage, and I just used 4 diodes rated a bit higher than I needed to pass in the circuit.

I've never had to design a DC smoothing circuit before, but I've read about the various methods of getting the job done. It shouldn't be too hard though, it is a simple add-on, maybe read some forums to find a few guidelines on which method to use (capacitor, inductor, or choke filter, perhaps there are others), and how to size the components and whatnot.

The good part about owning a scope, is when you're playing with different components (like different sized caps or something), you can see the end result and decide if it's good a enough waveform for you to try in your real project, or whether you want to play with changing a few things to try and get the scope waveform cleaner. I would usually try and test the circuit unloaded, and also loaded (at different load current points that the circuit would regularly operate at (just to confirm waveform is consistent under full spectrum of real-world operation).
 
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I will test anything you suggest, or if you like me and don't know what to buy to meet the needs of the smoothing out the ripple. I ordered a cheap scope to see what is what for this test.


Here is a good discussion that gives more insight about smoothing a rectified waveform:

 

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