I really like all the options and control you get with a hobby charger but the disadvantage is that you have to figure out yourself how to connect them to your batteries. I'd been reading posts from people who are wiring them up with loose wires and magnets but I wanted a more professional looking product so I took this Nitecore i4 charger which was DOA and the seller let me keep.
When looking at the back I thought perhaps it would be possible to fit the balance ports in the same space where the mains connector was and when measuring it it turned out to be the exact same width as a 2S and 3S socket next to one another and the exact same height as 2 sockets on top of each other; perfect!
So the first thing I did was strip most parts from the PCB and making sure all terminal points I was going to use were isolated from the rest of the board. I did this by scratching away any unwanted board traces with a hobby knife.
I then took a couple of sockets and soldered them onto a piece of perfboard and hot-glued that to the main PCB. Then it was a case of soldering all wires into place and triple checking if everything was in the right place and there were no shorts. I then popped all parts into place, added some labels and it was finished. When charging less than 4 batteries at a time I'm using dummy batteries in the remaining slots. It's really nice to be able to see the charge status of each individual cell and I don't understand why cradles like these aren't commercially available. You can get a decent hobby charger for less than $25 so even if something like this should be $15 you'd have a very flexible charger for only $40.
When looking at the back I thought perhaps it would be possible to fit the balance ports in the same space where the mains connector was and when measuring it it turned out to be the exact same width as a 2S and 3S socket next to one another and the exact same height as 2 sockets on top of each other; perfect!
So the first thing I did was strip most parts from the PCB and making sure all terminal points I was going to use were isolated from the rest of the board. I did this by scratching away any unwanted board traces with a hobby knife.
I then took a couple of sockets and soldered them onto a piece of perfboard and hot-glued that to the main PCB. Then it was a case of soldering all wires into place and triple checking if everything was in the right place and there were no shorts. I then popped all parts into place, added some labels and it was finished. When charging less than 4 batteries at a time I'm using dummy batteries in the remaining slots. It's really nice to be able to see the charge status of each individual cell and I don't understand why cradles like these aren't commercially available. You can get a decent hobby charger for less than $25 so even if something like this should be $15 you'd have a very flexible charger for only $40.
