LiPo 100mAh never charged

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ishback
 
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LiPo 100mAh never charged

Post by ishback »

I've been charging a 100mAh LiPo for more than 8h and judging by the LED in the charger, it's never fully charged. I also connected it to a Teensy with just a pushbutton, no LED's, and it run out of juice in less than 30min. There may be something wrong with the battery?

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Re: LiPo 100mAh never charged

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

It looks like you are using the default charge rate on that charger which is 500mA - 5 times the recommended charge rate for this battery. You need to replace the programming resistor with a 10K resistor to limit the charge rate to 100mA.
The included protection circuitry keeps the battery voltage from going too high (over-charging) or low (over-use) which means that the battery will cut-out when completely dead at 3.0V. It will also protect against output shorts. However, even with this protection it is very important that you only use a LiIon/LiPoly constant-voltage/constant-current charger to recharge them and at a rate of 100mA or less. We suggest our Micro Lipo charger, which has a 100mA default rate.
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Re: LiPo 100mAh never charged

Post by ishback »

Ok thanks, I have a Micro Lipo Charger, will use this one. Do you think having charged the battery with the other charger may have damaged it?

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Re: LiPo 100mAh never charged

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

Charging at a too high a rate is known to reduce the charge capacity and shorten the useful life of the battery (It is also a fire hazard). Most of the info on the subject pertains to larger battery packs so it is hard to know what to expect from a small cell like that. But I'd expect that charging at 5C for 8 hours would leave it in a less than healthy state.

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Re: LiPo 100mAh never charged

Post by Franklin97355 »

Which Teensy are you using. The Teensy 3.0 uses 155ma so your battery should last 38 minutes

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Re: LiPo 100mAh never charged

Post by ishback »

I'm using the Teensy 3.1, so this sounds about right. I'm trying to use the LowPower_Teensy3 library to extend the battery life, with interrupts on a rotary encoder but haven't been able to make it work yet. I may post a new thread tomorrow so it's easy to find for other people too.

Thanks for your support on this.

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