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Ode to the AA Battery

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: Ode to the AA Battery

#121

Post by bluGill »

brikym wrote: post #88

Some government needs to force some standards. Power tools are the worst. Each company is trying to create a network effect and it's anticompetitive.

Fortunately you can get adapters to take 18/20 volt batteries to any other (18 and 20 volt rechargeable are the same cells, but they measure the voltage differently). Likewise most 12v systems have adapters.

There are two issues: some manufactures put more smarts in the battery than others. So never run the battery completely dead which some combinations allow. Never charge the battery with other than the OEM charger.

Don't buy the off-brand batteries (which sometimes are counterfeit that look like the real thing) since they sometimes are not safe.

Re: Ode to the AA Battery

#122

Post by bxparks »

jandrese wrote: post #89
aftbit wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there's basically no reason you'd ever want an alkaline battery except cost. For your use case of long-term storage or a rarely used flashlight (e.g. in a car emergency kit), you'd want a Li/FeS2 as the parent poster recommended, also called just a "Lithium" primary (i.e. non-rechargable) cell. They have a longer shelf life, don't leak, hold more energy, can provide a higher discharge current, work over a wider t…

There are a handful of applications where alkalines are better. IR TV remotes run effectively forever on a couple of batteries and the slow self discharge on the alkalines makes them ideal for the task.

Great in theory.

In practice, the Duracell alkaline battery will leak caustic fluids inside the remote control and destroy it, and you will have to mortgage your house to buy a replacement on eBay, if it's even available. (I pick on Duracell because they are the worst. They leak if you look at them wrong, when they are brand new, inside the original packaging, before their "expiration date". But all alkalines are bad.)

All my remotes get NiMH batteries, no matter what. I don't care if one charge cycle lasts 10 years. It's cheaper than having the battery destroy the remote.

Re: Ode to the AA Battery

#123

Post by dragontamer »

D13Fd wrote: post #75
dragontamer wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NiMH cells are like $1 each. Seriously, Amazon.com is quoting me $18 for 16 cells, AA Amazon Basics NiMH. As I said earlier: it's likely a better strategy to buy 4 extra cells and keep them pre charged / topped off, rather than spending a few dollars on a better charger.

I'm not sure that's true in practice. Chargers are often shared in a household and you may not have control over people putting things back on the charger. My preference is to have something that charges more quickly, rather than a bunch of spare batteries. Plus if you leave batteries on the overcharge-style charger for long periods of time, I'm pretty sure they just dissipate the extra charge as heat, and that charg…

Don't leave them in the charger! You precharge and then store for a year+. Modern NiMHs only need topping off once per year or less.

So you have two piles. Good charged NiMHs and uncharged depleted NiMHs. While(uncharged.size() >= 2) put them in charger.

Then once per year, do a refresh charge on all the NiMHs. Easy-peasy.

Re: Ode to the AA Battery

#124

Post by bluGill »

zabzonk wrote: post #105
ghaff wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Have your manuals handy if you get a furnace guy/electrician in. My electrician actually wired up my thermostat wrong when I got a new thermostat in.

Thanks, and to the other guys. But I am asking about a remote wireless thermostat. How does it know to talk to my boiler, and not her next door's? As I said totally OT, and I do have a couple of good C/H firms I can get in to sort it.

That depends. Sometimes because they have encryption. It isn't hard to have shared keys of some sort. If there is no internet connection on the link (which is possible - I've never seen where both systems connect to wifi, but if they do worry!), and so you don't have to worry about malicious hackers and in turn the encryption is good enough even if done somewhat wrong.

Sometimes they are just send a radio signal and hope nobody else in range is using that frequency.

So again, there are too many different ways this is done to guess. Unfortunately they probably don't put this in the manual.

Re: Ode to the AA Battery

#125

Post by catlikesshrimp »

VikingCoder wrote: post #114

I suck at electronics, so - Could you possibly make a modern cell phone that runs off of rechargeable AA batteries? How many would it take to have roughly the same amount of screen time? ChatGPT says it's a bad idea, but roughly I'd need 10 AA batteries and a boost converter.

4 AA NiMh would get you 5V, the same coming from the slow charger. Let's say each AA battery holds 2000 mah. To reach 5000 mAH you would need 2.5 AA. Now multiply 2.5 x 4 = 10

The dumb AI read a good estimation.

Carrying 10 AA batteries strapped to your cellphone is not sexy. On the other hand, falling phones would land with the screen up - batteries down.

Re: Ode to the AA Battery

#126

Post by bahmboo »

brikym wrote: post #88

Some government needs to force some standards. Power tools are the worst. Each company is trying to create a network effect and it's anticompetitive.

That would be bad. The reality is that government can't micromanage technology. We could be in an alternate universe stuck with NiCad battery packs and 6v lantern batteries because the laws weren't kept up to date - particularly because the NiCad manufacturers and lantern battery manufacturers dumped money on politicians to cement their position.

I think the most I could get on board with was the mandating of USB C by the EU. You can have whatever connectors you like so long as you have the USB C. And then of course we can get lost in what "USB C" actually is.

Re: Ode to the AA Battery

#127

Post by schiem »

VikingCoder wrote: post #114

I suck at electronics, so - Could you possibly make a modern cell phone that runs off of rechargeable AA batteries? How many would it take to have roughly the same amount of screen time? ChatGPT says it's a bad idea, but roughly I'd need 10 AA batteries and a boost converter.

It depends on the AA battery, but you'd need 6 - 8 to get equivalent performance.

The Google Pixel 9 has a 4700 mAh battery at 3.9 volts. The total energy is around 18.3 watt hours.

A high capacity rechargeable AA battery is 2500 mAh at 1.2 volts, or around 3 watt hours. If you wired 3 AA batteries in series, and then 2 of those series in parallel (for a total of 6 batteries), that would give you 3.6v at 5000 mAh. 3.6 volts falls within a normal discharge curve for a lithium ion battery, so you probably wouldn't need a boost converter.

Re: Ode to the AA Battery

#128

Post by bluGill »

bityard wrote: post #95
bluGill wrote: post #49

I miss the old Rayovac batteries. They had a 10 year no leak guaranty, and it was real. I did get some to leak - I found a box of gear that I know hadn't been opened in 13 years, and even then it was a small leak that wouldn't be hard to clean up. But Energizer bought the company and changed the formula.

Were the old Rayovac batteries alkaline or zinc-carbon? Zinc-carbon batteries use a "dry cell" chemistry that will never leak, have a low self-discharge rate, and are very cheap to make and buy. You typically find them marketed as "heavy duty." The trade-off with those are that they have a lower energy capacity compared to alkaline. I use NiMH in almost everything but for things like TV remotes and clocks that sip po…

Alkaline. Rayovac spent a lot of money making alkaline that wouldn't leak (after several years of research one guy's wife asked "why don't you encase them in steel" - turns out that works, or at least that is how I heard the story). They never has the capacity of the more expensive competitors, but for my camping stuff I'll take that trade off. (all too often the last trip of the year I'm throwing everything in a box in the rain, and then it gets stored until next season when I'll just put new batteries in if needed)

Re: Ode to the AA Battery

#129

Post by bigstrat2003 »

bxparks wrote: post #122
jandrese wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a handful of applications where alkalines are better. IR TV remotes run effectively forever on a couple of batteries and the slow self discharge on the alkalines makes them ideal for the task.

Great in theory. In practice, the Duracell alkaline battery will leak caustic fluids inside the remote control and destroy it, and you will have to mortgage your house to buy a replacement on eBay, if it's even available. (I pick on Duracell because they are the worst. They leak if you look at them wrong, when they are brand new, inside the original packaging, before their "expiration date". But all alkalines are bad…

I have never, in my 40 years of life, had an alkaline battery leak and destroy something. I'm aware that it can happen, but in practice it doesn't happen very often.

Re: Ode to the AA Battery

#130

Post by mrguyorama »

bahmboo wrote: post #126
brikym wrote: post #88

Some government needs to force some standards. Power tools are the worst. Each company is trying to create a network effect and it's anticompetitive.

That would be bad. The reality is that government can't micromanage technology. We could be in an alternate universe stuck with NiCad battery packs and 6v lantern batteries because the laws weren't kept up to date - particularly because the NiCad manufacturers and lantern battery manufacturers dumped money on politicians to cement their position. I think the most I could get on board with was the mandating of USB C b…

Government "micromanaging" technology is why you can actually plug things into the phone network. Things like modems. For the internet. Before the government slapped AT&T, you leased the phone and it was wired into the wall and they could take you to court for connecting anything "unauthorized" into the wall.

It's also why PC compatibles ever happened at all.

It's also why Apple phones finally have a standard port. Which you admit.

Interoperability is not natural, and IP laws make it trivial for companies to utterly block as we are dealing with today. Interoperability often requires regulation to force companies to allow people to interact with "their" standards.

The government can manage interfaces in a way that enables standardization and interoperability without limiting capabilities.

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