tomas21 said:So what batteries in addition to the ones that come with the BC-900 do you recommend as spares?

Link

I have a set of the Ray-o-vac hybrids that are working very well. I also hear good things about the Sanyo "eneloop" hybrids.

Well I think I'm going to buy the BC-900 & the Costco eneloops pkg.

Thanks, also, for the tip about Costco selling the eneloops. Great price. You get 8 AA’s, 2 AAA’s, a bunch of plastic sleeves that convert the AA’s to C’s & D’s and a charger for under $30 (as of Aug. 3, 2008).

$37.99

back up to $39.99 this morning

Does this charger have issues sometime in detecting end of charge @ the default 200mA charge rate? I was charging my 2000mA Eneloops @200mA and it seemed to charge longer than normal and voltage went up over 1.5v.

microwiz said:
There's also a paperclip-shorting trick that you can do on the BC-900, but given that I have other semi-dumb chargers around (2 from the Costco Eneloop kit deal and 2 of the clearanced Duracell chargers from Walgreens that can also be used as car chargers and USB power supplies), I have never had the courage or inclination to try. I understand it might damage the BC-900 too, so stick with the dumb chargers for the initial top-up!

Hope that helps... I feel your pain over having bought Tenergy batteries too.

Tenergy and even the simple charger have been ok for me, at least for casual use..

Just for clarity, the paperclip trick isn't really fooling the charger as some imply. You're simply using one cell to quickly charge the other cell up a bit, and at a high enough current to clear most whiskers etc. When doing this the charger is basically just holding your batteries and providing the bottom contact. You could just as easily use two pieces of wire and short the batteries together (like pole to like) outside the charger and then quickly put the dud in the charger. Of course you're working the donor battery very hard, use one that's near the end of life anyway.

Since the charger should only be supplying current and reading the voltage, and should be able to handle a shorted cell, it should be ok to do this in charger. But I don't have one yet and haven't studied it, so can't say this 100%, it is just from general understanding of chargers so most will get what's going on when you do this. If you want to resurrect a cell and not risk your charger, do it outside the charger then quickly put it in. Also a good idea to do this behind a sheet of plexi, batteries have a lot of stored energy and you're dumping a lot fast doing this, there is some risk of fire or explosion. And also of course do not do this with Lithium Ion since they are far more likely to explode.

PS If you do this with wire then make sure you aren't actually holding the wire with bare fingers. The wire could get extremely hot if the cell is hard shorted or takes a few seconds to clear, and you may not feel it heating in time to avoid a burn.. Also occurs that for AA you could put the bad and a good inside one of the 2 AA cell D size adapters for a few seconds to do this, then move the bad cell to the charger.

This is alive again for $37.99

Thanks, guess I just have to cough up the $37 for this one since like most FWers, strike out on the previous BC-700 for $7 bux + shipping. I wonder if this qualified for the wired rebate or not?

I only use Eneloop or Duracell LSD rechargeable batteries. I don't use non-LSD NiMH batteries. Is the Eneloop charger (from the Costco deal) good enough for LSD batteries? Is the BC-900 geared more towards non-LSD batteries or would LSD batteries also benefit from this charger?

tripper said:Does anyone know what may be going on with my charger? Is it defective? It will charge the batteries for as long as it's supposed to, then it says that they're "full."...No idea. You haven't given enough details for someone to even suggest an appropriate answer.

• What capacity / kind of batteries?
  
• New or old?
  
• "...as long as it's supposed to..." - What does that mean?
  - What charging rate?
  - What mode?
  - Maybe the batteries are worn out?
  - Maybe you got a FALSE FULL indication?
  
• etc...

• What kind of batteries?
  
• New or old?
  
• What "device"?
  
• "...noted the same behavior..." - what behavior? Is it another camera?

TEST the original NiMh's from your Canon. What's the final MAH reading on the BC-900?