I'm working on a project that I want to permanently install 4 NiMH AAA rechargeable batteries (in series). The plan is to hook the batteries up to a charging plug and charge it with an external DC wall plug. I don't really know what the technical names are called, but here's a picture of what I have in mind.
1. I basically don't know anything about recharging batteries, so I'm afraid of "over charging" them. I've read the battery charger wiki page and it specifically said intelligent chargers work well for NiHM batteries:
For Ni-Cd and NiMH batteries, the voltage across the battery increases slowly during the charging process, until the battery is fully charged. After that, the voltage decreases, which indicates to an intelligent charger that the battery is fully charged. Such chargers are often labeled as a ΔV, "delta-V," or sometimes "delta peak", charger, indicating that they monitor the voltage change.
These are the batteries I have. Many of the other rechargeable ones I've seen on DX say they are overcharge protected and I don't see that listed for these. Is that a problem or will it be okay? I'm assuming the more overcharging that happens, the short the battery will live. I could also find ones with OC protection. If I did that, would that mean I could potentially use any wall plug DC converter to charge them?
2. Where do I find an intelligent charger & plug like the one in the picture? 4 AAA batteries would require a 5v charger because they're in series right? Or do I use 1.2v?
If this is successful, there's other projects I'd like do the same for only with different sized batteries like 3v CR2/123 and 3.7v Trustfire 18650/14500s. Which I assume would use the same techniques, just scaled to the voltages of these and not the AAA I'm using for this project.
There's probably some questions I didn't ask since I don't know what they are, so any extra advice or information is greatly appreciated!
1. I basically don't know anything about recharging batteries, so I'm afraid of "over charging" them. I've read the battery charger wiki page and it specifically said intelligent chargers work well for NiHM batteries:
For Ni-Cd and NiMH batteries, the voltage across the battery increases slowly during the charging process, until the battery is fully charged. After that, the voltage decreases, which indicates to an intelligent charger that the battery is fully charged. Such chargers are often labeled as a ΔV, "delta-V," or sometimes "delta peak", charger, indicating that they monitor the voltage change.
These are the batteries I have. Many of the other rechargeable ones I've seen on DX say they are overcharge protected and I don't see that listed for these. Is that a problem or will it be okay? I'm assuming the more overcharging that happens, the short the battery will live. I could also find ones with OC protection. If I did that, would that mean I could potentially use any wall plug DC converter to charge them?
2. Where do I find an intelligent charger & plug like the one in the picture? 4 AAA batteries would require a 5v charger because they're in series right? Or do I use 1.2v?
If this is successful, there's other projects I'd like do the same for only with different sized batteries like 3v CR2/123 and 3.7v Trustfire 18650/14500s. Which I assume would use the same techniques, just scaled to the voltages of these and not the AAA I'm using for this project.
There's probably some questions I didn't ask since I don't know what they are, so any extra advice or information is greatly appreciated!