Li-Ion Battery Setup HIGHLY RECOMMENDED (Please Read Me)

[Nyte]

Hehe alright. Never mind, the indicator LEDs turned green shortly after I posted, and safe to say - they worked beautifully! Coudn't believe the difference between the saber out of the box and then with fully charged batteries. It is incredibly bright and I'll never order a saber with standard setup again! (except if I want one with which the Li-ion setup isn't offered).

[Nyte]

Alright, this thing is NOT low-volume anymore. It's giving off high-frequency whistling sounds that are soon gonna be unbearable!
Could this be because of the 230V outlets and me just using another figure 8 cable I found lying around? Should I go buy an adapter? O.o
This is starting to freak me out, cause the charger is whistling like hell and it's giving off a lot of heat..

EDIT: Just to clarify, the power cord I'm using says the same thing on the connector as the one that came with the charger (2.5A 250V~)

[Novastar]

Be more specific??

* Are you in Europe?  Sounds like it, you said 220v vs. 110v....
* This is when you are charging a saber, yes?  Only when it charges?  Is the charger from Ultrasabers, or is it from Ebay, etc.?
* Do you have more than one Li-Ion saber?
* So you are saying you are using a converter to change from 110v to 220v??  Or something else?

Also... maybe a video would help...

Lastly... hmm... tons of heat does NOT sound normal... and if the whistling sound is SUPER AUDIBLE + unbearable... that is not right at all (from what I've experienced).  Still... more details, please?

[Nyte]

Yes, I'm in Europe (Sweden). Using 230V outlets.
This is when I'm charging the TrustFire 3.7v 900mAh Li-Ion batteries from my saber with the included TrustFire charger from UltraSabers.
No, I do not have more than one Li-Ion saber (yet. I'll have another one on Friday the coming week).
No, I'm not using a converter. I simply found a power cord of mine which has the same figure 8 connector and the same current and voltage rating (2.5A and 250V) as the one supplied by TrustFire.
On the charger it says it's supposed to take up to 240V, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it works the same when it's getting that higher voltage (I guess).
The whistling was enough to give me a headache, and to piss my girlfriend and her dog off like hell.
But since I haven't tried the supplied power cord, I think I'm gonna try getting an adapter which probably chokes the voltage down to 110V.

I may have been exaggerating regarding the heat since I was so stressed out about everything else. It didn't give off much more heat than my regular NiMH chargers.

[Artano]

I got the Li-Ion set-up in my new Dark Shock. I believe that the recharger is good for various sizes of batteries, not just the AAs that go in my saber. On another section of the forum folks confirmed for me that,  if I want to go rechargeable for my son's Dark Initiate LE, that I need NiMH AAA rechargeables not Li-Ion AAA rechargables (which would be too strong).

Quick question: Will the TrustFire recharger that came with my Li-Ion-using Shock also be fine for recharging NiMH batteries? I don't want to buy another recharger if the one I have will do the trick, nor do I want to be pushing too much juice into the wrong kind of battery. Something tells me that might be a bad thing. 

[Danakar Endeel]

Hey guys  

I've read about your questions regarding the charger not being able to fit in european sockets. Check out the picture below



That is a simple adaptor plug which should allow your US charger to fit in EU power outlets. I got mine from China, but I'm sure that any decent electronics hardware store should have these types of adaptor plugs  

The plug itself has the following info on it: 6A 125V/250V

[Nyte]

Hey guys. I think I read somewhere that the Obsidian supposedly draws almost no current at all when in "sleep" mode?
The thing is, I left my saber sitting for about a week (oh, what horror!) with I think half the charge left.
And when I picked it up yesterday it was 100% dead. No light, no sound, no nothing.

I'm just wondering, is this normal? In just a week I'd figured there'd be no change whatsoever, but apparently I was wrong.

Oh, and Nova, here's a video of my whistling charger. Shortly after filming it, the charger went quiet for about 15mins (and then kept whistling again).
As you can hear, it increases in pitch. It does that every now and then until the batteries are almost fully charged.
At that point I guess it reaches such a high frequency that I can no longer hear it.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zErQlubmSYw" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zErQlubmSYw</a>

[Master Artorius Vidnyl]

The battery drain you descriibed seems about right.  Even though sleep mode draws very little charge it does draw it continuously.  So a week sounds about right to me.  As for the whistling . . . I'll leave it to the experts.

[Saberstar]

All you have to find is a leader that you use for small stuff like radio or printer maybe a cd-player or mixer which has the same outgoing that fits perfectly to the battery-charger I `m from Norway so i had to use my son`s old cd-player leader to connect to 230v. And CHARGE...

[Novastar]

Whoa, that charger "whining" IS trippy... I can't say even the wacky one *I* have does that.  Methinks it is indeed having to do with the 110v to 220v conversion if I had to take a GUESS (and that's all it is at this point--a guess--sorry!)

As to the Obsidian current draw... well, I don't know the specs on the exact mA (for either v1 or v1.1), but... let's see:

@ 1mA draw (over an hour) ... and yes, I'm just "assuming" this is a fairly high "minimal draw" for Obs... on either version...
24 hours in a day...
168 hours in a week...

168 x 1mA = 168mA...

This simple calculation leads us to believe that even if the idle draw was 5mA (thus, ~840mA)... certain cells would not fully be drained.

The cells *I* use are 18650s, mostly all ~2200mAh to ~2600mAh... so... even a 5mA draw over a week wouldn't "touch" a full charge.

THAT BEING SAID...

~ if you had a partial charge...
~ if your cells are 900mAh capacity (I think they are???)

...you could have drained ~400mA after around 2 weeks.  Maybe.  MAYBE!

STILL.  I don't think Obsidian "idle draws" anywhere NEAR 1mA.  If my memory was better, I'd know what Alex told me, but... I don't recall.  He said something that was less than 1mA though, I think.  Again--both versions.

V1 actually draws less idle juice than v1.1 because... you have to hold the button down to power it on.  But they are still drawing VERY LITTLE overall.

[Ultra]

Keep in mind, Li-Ions never drain fully due to the protection PCB, so you can't get the full mah out of them.

Obsidian has less than 1ma idle current consumption.  Don't worry, plenty of people have tested this to see if I'm lying.  Anyone with a multimeter can verify this for themselves.

You might want to do a more scientific test than leaving a saber sit for "about" a week with "I think" half the charge left.

I have Obsidian sabers sitting around with blinking AV switches that haven't hit the charger in a month and still fire up every time.

[Salvatore1971]

I have Obsidian sabers sitting around with blinking AV switches that haven't hit the charger in a month and still fire up every time.

Blinking AV switches? Yuummmm, Slurp!   

  Prayer: "COS, please, we need your aid!" 

[jedikai]

As did Nyte, I found that after a couple weeks without use, my saber was dead when I wanted to take it to an event.  Lesson learned:  charge it up the night before!  Thus, as with my camera, I thought to order a second set of batteries.  However, looks like I'll be charged $11 shipping for a $6 item???   That doesn't make any sense.  I'm glad you offer the extra batteries here but I don't really want to pay almost double their cost in shipping.

[Ultra]

Why do people say things like this?  Shipping rates have nothing to do with the cost of the item.

Go to the UPS website and calculate the shipping from San Jose, CA.  It might make sense, then.

If you want Emory to ship a different method that might cost less, email shipping@ultrasabers.com and ask if he'll do it.  Nicely.

[navajas]

I think most people who never shipped items professionally really have no clue. I eventually just rolled the cost of shipping into retail and said, "Free Shipping". Ha, obviously works better on a $7000 item than a $6 battery. But really, the services UPS provide to companies with volume just aren't understood by people of the eBay era who think, "Why don't you just take the time to drop it in a padded envelope and drive it down to the USPS for me?" Sure bud, and I'll do that every time someone asks fifteen times a week and go broke and insane. No biggie. Who needs margins anyway?