Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

Recently our team has been experiencing a lot of problems with our battery chargers (We have had them longer than any mentor or team member has been on the team) and we believe they are on their last legs and that they are taking batteries with them. Because of this we are in the market for new battery chargers, preferably high(ish) quality at a decent price. If you don't know what product to suggest, it would be great if you tell us the charger your team uses and your experience with it.

Also it would be great to know what brand batteries you use as well and how they have worked out for your team.

Thanks

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

We bought two of these this year and love them.
http://www.andymark.com/Battery-Char...-p/am-2026.htm

Along with these batteries.
http://www.andymark.com/Power-Patrol...-p/am-3062.htm

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

We have been experimenting with this BatteryMINDer charger for maintaining batteries in our lab. We have other 2/4/6 amp chargers that use at competition but this charger is cheap and lets you plug in 4 batteries at a time when used with a spliter. It charges slowly and help recondition batteries. So far we haven't had any problems with this charger.

We buy all our batteries straight from MK. Call them and tell them you are a FIRST time; they have been a great supplier for a long time.

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

We use Auto Meters Buspro-660s. They are heavy duty chargers and last for years.

http://www.autometer.com/buspro-660-...20v-5-amp.html

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

We've been very happy with our Autometer BusPro 660 chargers and I would highly recommend them.

I spent days straight extensively researching chargers from every vendor in every industry sector and market and that's what I came up with as a best fit for our application.

I wanted something either 5 or 6 amp that was at least a 3-station multi-bank, had no user controls or buttons whatsoever, and had good red-green status lights. There are not too many chargers that meet all those requirements.

We also have a DualPro RS3 that we're happy with, but it's an epoxy-potted brick so if and when anything goes bad, it's off to the scrap heap.

On the Autometer, the voltage of the batteries coming off it seems a but less than other chargers, but this doesn't seem to affect our performance, and is probably a good thing for the longevity of the batteries.

If you order direct from AutoMeter, be sure to tell them you're a FIRST Robotics team. I'm not aware of any discount, but it would be good for them to know about our application for their products.

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

We've been using 4 of these for the past 3 years. Working in the automotive industry lead me to these. 2 amps for topping off at the shop and 6 amps at the competition.
http://smile.amazon.com/CHARGE-4506-12V-Smart-Charger/dp/B004RTJOH0?ie=UTF8&keywords=4506%20battery%20charg er&qid=1465490955&ref_=sr_1_2&sr=8-2

Yes they have buttons but they work great, are small in size and <$30 each.

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

What kind of problems?

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

Wow! That's a really great price. I've also been looking at new battery chargers for our shop. I know they say they are rated for 6 amps, but I'm skeptical due to the low price. How long have they lasted?

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

We haven't used that specific charger but use a charger that was pretty cheap. It use to cost from $22-30 depending on where we bought it and we haven't had one die yet. So don't let the price scare you too much. This is the charger we use at events for those wondering, but it's out of stock at the cheaper places amazon has them for $40

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

+1 clint we have 2 of these and love them

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

Our current chargers are multi stage chargers and rather than going to the next stage some chargers are just continuing to charge till we manually stop them, we have also had problems where they would blow circuits and are getting louder and louder. A few brand new batteries have already fallen victim and no longer hold their charge while some older batteries are still working just fine.

Also, thank you for all the replies, hopefully this has not only been helpful to me but to others as well

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

What brand and model are they?

When that happened, what did you do? (e.g. repair or replace)

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

I don't know the make and model off the top of my head (I can tell you in a few hours as I'm going to the shop to meet with people about this issue) but the weird thing about the chargers breakers were that it only happened when we first got them running and it would only trip the breaker at competition so we put one in our cart ad to not any teams near us. We had a professional electrician look at the cart and the chargers and he could not find anything wrong but it kept happening. We honestly felt that since they had been around for 6+ years now and that previous members had not taken good care of them that we should buy new ones. The really strange thing iso I have been working with these chargers for years now and only this year did problems occure. We had a couple matchest where we could barely move our robot at half speed because of it (we got really lucky on some of those and a replays were called due to other non-related reasons). We have had a lot of issues with alliance partners putting in dead batteries in the past and would hate to let down our alliance like that. As of right now we are considering doing as a previous post alluded to and using them as 2A chargers for storage of batteries at the shop.

Once again thanks to everyone who had contributed, and best of luck in years to come

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

I had a battery charger from the 1960s that started behaving erratically last year. After some (too brief) troubleshooting and soul-searching I threw it out but saved the output cable (the one with the clamps on it).

Recently while setting up some motor tests here at home, I had occasion to use that cable, and discovered to my chagrin that the reason I was getting erratic voltage at the clamps was that the clamp-to-cable crimp joints had corroded. I probably threw away a perfectly good charger.

It seems every time I throw something away I wind up regretting it soon thereafter. Must be some variation of Murphy's Law...

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

The chargers I posted about are designed for automotive use. I've used some form of this charter for 5+ years with no problem. The do have three selections, 6v/12v, std/agm/gel, and 2A/6A. Then when the light turns green as fully charged they switch to trickle mode. Best bang for the buck. We are able to keep 12 batteries fully charged at events with 4 chargers.

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

From the description in the user manual, it sure doesn't sound like it uses trickle charge. What they call "maintenance mode" in the manual sounds like float, not trickle.

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

Edit: My post is intended not so much for OP, as to document our learned battery charging rules for benefit new teams. If we're doing something wrong/not quite right, I'd love to hear it.


We have used a wide variety of chargers over the years. The #1 key feature is to get something which explicitly supports gel/AGC batteries. The other "nice" feature is the "float charge", which keeps batteries topped off, more important if your team takes a serious break outside of build/competition season. [Edit 2: That is, if the batteries are not kept on float chargers, put each one on a charger every two weeks or so until it is "topped off".)

Based on my reading (and not contradicted by experience), at least as important as your charger is your usage/charging rules. During competition, change batteries between every match, and put the battery on a charger stat. During practice and demo, do NOT wait for your batteries to fail, but replace them on a schedule. If you're actively driving and shooting and such, it may be as often as every five or ten minutes. If you're just shooting balls using pneumatics, but doing little driving (as our robot is doing this year at many demos), you may be able to go to a half hour or more on a charge. If your batteries ever get below 12V with no load, you've let them work way too long. We currently try to get our battery changes for relatively low draws around 12.5V (or pereferably higher). Also, after use, put batteries back on a charger as quickly as possible. Lead-acid batteries sitting discharged are batteries heading for recycling.

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

You are technically correct. Both serve exactly the same function but a float charger is a "smart" charger that can turn the charging circuit on and off based upon the state of charge of the battery which is obviously better.

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

Because of the differences, they don't serve exactly the same function.

You can leave a battery connected to a properly designed and configured float charger for months without harming the battery.

If you do the same thing with a trickle charger, you run the risk of destroying the battery.

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

With these chargers are you then adding the Anderson connectors to them yourselves or are you just using the clamps to charge? I am interested in these in expensive single port chargers.

CHARGE IT! 4506 6/12V (6/2) Amp Smart Charger


Our team has a DualPro 2 port and 3 port charger so in theory we could charge 5 batteries at a time. We are now down to only two working ports. The mentors were talking about going to single chargers so that we don't lug around dead ports.

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

Hi, did you add Anderson connectors to the ends of these or just use the clamps for charging?

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

We added Anderson connectors to them and plug them directly into batteries.

Re: Best Battery Chargers 2016
 

We got a Noco Genius G4 6V/12V 4 Bank charger at the beginning of last year. It is a little expensive, but is slightly cheaper than the Andymark 3 bank charger. (Also, it was on sale for about $75 off when we got it)