Its called a torch bulb I think...
There are two issues with rechargeable. Self discharge over time and
capacity. To stop one from affecting the other you need a big drain that
takes a known time on whatever battery type it is. Of course this takes no
count of internal resistance which may make the actual current limit quite
low when you use it in series with others.
Finding the duff one in a set is quite hard, and there usually is one that
dies first causing reverse charging by the others through the load and
making it worse.
In the end when I could see, I rigged up an open battery holder for four of
the type I used, ni cads in those days, and put a plug on the other end that
could run say, a cassette player via its adaptor socket. I'd then use thin
probes to measure the voltage of each cell as they went down, chucking out
the ones that went down first.


Brian

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This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please!
wrote in message ...
I have lots of AAA and AA NiMh batteries which have been through quite
a lot of discharge/recharge cycles. I have a tester which tells me if
they're charged or not but I'd really like to check their actual
capacity. Some of the AAA ones at least have very little capacity now
but it's difficult to check.

I could rig up a simple resistor discharge with some sort of computer
monitoring via an AtoD interface but surely someone out there must
produce and sell such a thing for not very much.

Has anyone come across anything like this?

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Chris Green
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