Smart chargers, different methods and types?

[ericmark]

I a few years ago bought my first smart charger, it was an early Lidi one, before they had a volt meter, and the only problem was the battery had to be over around 7.5 volt for it to start charging a 12 volt battery, but I put it in tandem with another charger and killed it.

Next one also Lidi again 3.8 amp had a volt meter built in, and since I had an energy meter which connects up to the PC, I actually monitored its performance. It had 4 rates, 3.8, 3, 0.8 and 0.1 amp, and the charger simply stepped down the rates as the battery charged up.

I wanted another and now they have moved to a 5 amp model, and out of interest I again monitored the charge rate, but it is completely different to the old charger, still around the same look and size with a volt meter, but seems it has changed a lot in the way it works, on switching on once sees at first a very low charge rate, then it starts to show alternating two voltages, I assume on on charge and one off charge, and the charge pattern is very different. can't blend together as scale changes, but the charge rate slowly decays, and the volt meter continues to alternate between two readings. It has in fullness of time turned off except for the odd bleep like the old version, but I think it has dropped to the maintaining battery stage a lot quicker.

The main change is the return rate of charge when the battery voltage drops below the threshold, it would with old model only return to 0.8 amp, new model note shows 51 watt, which means better for things like caravan batteries when used as it is charged, but should a battery get a shorted cell it can over charge it.

Unfortunately the charger disconnected over night, on reconnecting I got this result, what I want to see is the pattern when auto switches back on as the voltage drops.

 

[ericmark]

How odd, same charger on Honda Jazz instead of Jaguar XE and a completely different pattern.

Sorry missed a bit, as you can see from times, but nearly the same as the old 3.8 amp charger, watching volt meter it climbs to around 14.4 volts then switches off until dropped to around 12.8 volt the first little bit is different, battery volts were under 12 to start with.

I went with a clamp on ammeter and realised it is switching faster than the energy monitor can register between the two settings or three settings so it is changing between the 0.8, 3 and 5 amp rates.