HuanGao USB powered single 18650 charger

[BDUAres]

On Ebay I picked up a cheap pair of what turned out to be the same item fasttech sells as the "HuanGao USB powered 1*18650 Li-On charger"

I plugged them into both my laptop USB port and a wall outlet USB adapter, and pulled out the multitester to see how it was performing. What I got was 4.19 volts coming off the charger connections at 600 mA.

According to the discussions about them on the FT site the board in these is supposed to be CC/CV. There does seem to be some sort of "smart" circuitry in the boards inside the USB plug itself, and the USB plug had an LED light which glows green when charged and red when charging.

Does anyone else have one of these, and if so how well does it work for you? I bought them for travel/work/car use and wanted something tiny and easy to carry, and these seemed to fit the bill and at less than $3 each it was really a no-risk deal if it turned out to be a dud.

 

[polpol]

Sounds sketchy. And batteries and chargers will never be a "no risk deal" for me. btw, if you need a charger for work/travel/car then you don't have enough batteries

tapatalk

 

[BDUAres]

So far tonight I have put these things to the test 2x each, one hooked to a laptop USB port and one to an AC powered USB adapter. Batteries charged have been two 2900 mAh Panasonic and two 2200 mAh Interstate Batteries 18650s. All 4 charged without issue and they don't even get warm while charging. The LED displays red while charging, yellowish when nearly done, then green when finished.

I am impressed with both the speed of charge from a USB port and the tiny size factor. It charged batteries I had been vaping on all day in 2-3 hours. Now I just need to see how they hold up over time.

 

[BDUAres]

I've had the USB 18650 chargers now for 5 days, and in that 5 days they have been all I have used to recharge my batteries. So far these things seem to far surpass the cheap dual 18650 chargers I got from FastTech and Interstate Batteries, which doesn't mean much as those are the run of the mill cheap China chargers, but at the same time the USB chargers seem to be as fast or faster, and they do not cause any heating up of either my Panasonic 2900mAh or Interstate Batteries 2200mAh batteries, which sounds like a plus as heat and batteries are usually bad for each other.

While they are certainly not Nitecore quality, the sub $3 USB chargers seem to work just fine, are easily the most portable chargers I have yet found, and being USB are able to be plugged in just about anywhere in any country I happen to be in. Really can't find a fault with them yet.

 

[stevegmu]

Looks like a news story waiting to happen...

 

[BDUAres]

nah. Got the little charger itself sitting on a metal box on my desk. if the battery blew it would be on a big hunk of metal. the input is only 5 volts from the source, unlike a 110-220v outlet from the mains, and it's only putting out 600mA max at 4.19v to charge the battery. So the batteries stay cool while charging, no high voltages or high amperage charging is involved to overload anything. It isn't going to charge a battery in an hour or two, but it does do the job every time, and in a safe way.

Compared to those dual 18650 chargers which plug into the AC mains and which come as part of many mod kits, these things are on another level of safety.

 

[WarHawk-AVG]

Believe it or not...the CC/CV recharging can be done with a microcircuit that is only 1/8" square

You could build you an emergency charger with one of the below
USB li-ion charger 1A Lithium Battery Charging Module tp4056 DIY 18650 charger, some wire and a few of those molybdenum magnets soldered on to the end of the wire

tp4056 data sheet

See the tiny square IC on the boards below...that is the Li Ion charging microcontroller...not very large

Ultimately the thing below is the ops charger...just in a much nicer wrapper

Is it doable..sure, is it recommended if you DON'T know what you are doing...HECK NO!

 

[WarHawk-AVG]

With that said after looking at the image of the charger and the schematic

That small surface mount resistor that is upside down 122, is a 1.2KΩ resistor (Rprog output of 1000mA [might be a little high for most Li Ion batteries]), you could remove it and change the regulated output to a safer CC/CV output, from the datasheet, the Rprog resistor off pin 2 of the IC at 5kΩ would limit the output to 250mA

In case you are a techy type

 

[Rickajho]

Has the OP actually measured the voltage of the batteries coming off this thing? There was one report here of that charger running batteries up to 4.4 volts. Bad bad bad,

 

[BDUAres]

Batteries coming off the charger are at 4.12 volts, which correspond to the data I have found which stated the auto cutoff was at this voltage as well. The amperage of the charger is variable, up to 1 amp depending on the input source. Obviously if the input is a computer or common cell phone AC to USB adapter this will be limited to 500mA or less and that is what those devices output. I have a slightly higher power AC USB adapter made for SatNavs, and it outputs 600mA, which is how I am charging at slightly more the normal 500mA amperage.

 

[Rickajho]

You got it all down. But the bottom line is keep an eye on battery voltages with those things. I don't know if it's a matter of "if it's defective it will be right out of the box" or if it can develop a problem over time. (Those things kinda scare me. I won't use anything less than an Xtar.)