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dead battery pack q

4K views 11 replies 6 participants last post by  ledoman 
#1 ·
Hi,

My cheap Amazon light stopped working, so I dug into the bundle of 4 cells--there's 5+ volts going into a circuit board, 0 volts coming out. What is that board's function? Is it essential? It's stealing all my voltses...
 
#2 ·
You need the little circuit board - bad things will happen if you connect the battery pack directly to the LEDs. The function of the circuit is to convert the voltage of the battery into a nicely regulated constant current for the LEDs, as LEDs are current controlled devices and their light output is pretty much a linear function of their current. Put too much voltage across them and they'll draw way too much current, either damaging the LEDs (if you're lucky) and/or overheating the battery pack (not good with lithium). In theory LEDs could be controlled with a regulated constant voltage but it's not easy to do as a small change in voltage leads to a big change in current/brightness and there's a temperature coefficient to the LED voltage-to-brightness relationship that needs to be accounted for.

Phile, check for loose wires, a dodgy switch or bad solder joints on the components as those would be the most likely faults. Charred components are also a bad sign, although some can become a little heat-discoloured with no ill effects.
 
#4 ·
Grassington was confusing an LED driver with the protection board in your battery pack. They perform completely different functions.

The protection board is important for the longevity and safety of lithium ion batteries. It prevents them from being over charged and over discharged, both of which are bad for the batteries and can lead to potentially dangerous failures such as cells venting/exploding violently!

You mention there is 5 volts going in, but nothing coming out. If it really is 5 volts then the cells are pretty much completely discharged and the protection board is doing its job by not letting power continue to flow and further discharging the batteries.

If you think you need a replacement protection board you can get it from places like eBay but you need to get the correct one the battery configuration. From looking at that photo it appears to be the typical 2S 7.4v variety. Something like this should work as a replacement: 2S Li-ion Lithium Battery 3.7v 18650 Charger BMS Protection Board 5A 7.4V 8.4V | eBay
 
#9 ·
Since OP got his question answered I'd like to hijack the thread. I have 2 cheapo battery packs for my BT40 clone, one with this pcb and one without.

For the pack without, it's straight wired to the cells, no resistors or any circuits. Those batteries are .3v off from each other and obviously unbalanced. Would purchasing one if these and wiring it in help get the batteries back in sync, or are they too far gone and I should ditch this piece of junk?

I just hate to throw away the cells, even if they're not great capacity it's a backup I can bring...

I should add that it's a 4 battery 7.4v pack
 
#10 ·
Adding protection circuit won't help to balance the cells. You need charge each set (2 in parallel) of cells separately or with hobby charger which can do balancing charge. If you have any (good) Li-Ion charger for 185650 cells you can connect charger terminals to one set and charge it full. Repeat it for another set. That way you would got all cells fully charged and balanced. Since one set is worse than another you would need to repeat that process from time to time if you would like to keep the pack balanced. If there is no need to have pack sealed you can solder balance connector to it. You would basicaly get wireing like that:
Text White Line Font Parallel

with balancing connector marked "b".

Search for "2S balance" and you'll get the point.
 
#3 ·
Huh, I get voltage with one test lead upstream of the board and one test lead downstream--and can get that same voltage on either of the downstream wires (pos/neg), trying one at a time. Then I broke the board's connection to the middle of the pack, but left it connected to the battery pos and neg, and both downstream wires then had voltage. The back of the board looks fine. Can the board be replaced with an off-the-shelf part? I assume running the light without the circuit is a fire risk?

Yellow Circuit component Electronic component Flooring Technology
 
#5 ·
^ A picture is worth a thousand words, innit. Kwarwick is quite correct, that board is the battery protection circuit and plays no part in the LED driving apart from linking the batteries to the LED driver circuit and/or charger when everything is healthy. It shouldn't be bypassed - aside from the risk of fire, you really don't want to breathe in the fumes from a venting lithium cell, they're nasty.

Phile - have you tried putting everything back together and plugging in the charger? It might be that the protection circuit is OK and it's just the undervoltage lockout kicking in and cutting the juice, as kwarwick mentioned. You can tell the cells are charging OK if the voltage starts to rise. They'll start off at 2.5 V per cell or thereabouts (the point at which the UVLO trip disconnected the LED load) and will slowly rise to a plateau of 4.1 V per cell (ideally) or 4.3 V per cell (max for safety). The cell voltage will drop when the charger is disconnected - this is normal.

Many chargers have a safety feature that prevents them charging cells that are over-discharged, and 2.5 V per cell is about the threshold for this so there's a chance the charger may automatically disconnect its power if it detects a low cell voltage. It might be possible to nudge the cell voltage over this threshold by slowly and gently warming them up a bit (keep it below 50 °C/120 °F though, because lithium). I don't recommend boosting the voltage from an improvised charger because - aside from the risks of damaging the cells this way - lithium cells can be permanently damaged from over-discharge and can become unstable and unsafe. This is the reason chargers also have an undervoltage lockout. 2.5 V per cell might be salvageable, but something like 1.5 V per cell is a definite candidate for the battery recycling bin.
 
#6 ·
Phile - have you tried putting everything back together and plugging in the charger? It might be that the protection circuit is OK and it's just the undervoltage lockout kicking in and cutting the juice, as kwarwick mentioned.
Oh, that would be a tidy fix. I think the charger may be dead--should it put out any voltage without a battery attached to it? It isn't doing so.

Thanks a lot, both of you! Kwarwick, you were correct about the cell layout. Nice to know that circuit can be replaced cheaply.
 
#11 ·
Thank you for the response ledoman, and the diagram!

I'm new to battery tech, so I appreciate the learning opportunity. If I understand correctly, I would need to balance first then install a balancing board to maintain it? I'd like to have this fit back into the rubber housing it came in, the board below is cheap and would probably fit.

I don't have a hobby charger that can do them separately unfortunately, am I correct in assuming a balancing board would not be able to balance them if they're already so far off?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/2S-10A-w-B...m=122526878989&_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851
 
#12 ·
Yes it is best to have cells balanced prior installing any board. At least I would not sealed it hunbalanced. I'm not shure about board linked but I've got bad feeling with some other (parasitic drain). Also linked board would be probably to big to pull rubber cover over it. In any case it would be hard to do since it is 23mm wide wich means it would stretch over mid line of cells 3mm in height. 10A is bit overkill but it might be better than one I've tried out something like that: https://www.ebay.com/itm/2S-Li-ion-...otection-BMS-PCB-Board-w-Balance/252788945359
 
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