Hi guys, I recently purchased the DIYMore V8 battery shield for my project.
I am looking around at batteries now and I am not sure if I need to use protected batteries with this shield.
I will also be recharging the batteries via the shield, if it makes a difference.
Does anyone know if unprotected batteries are OK?
This was a new one for me , so I googled ... in case it’s new to others:
Most protected batteries have these components:
PTC: Protect against over heating and indirectly over current. Will automatically reset.
CID or Pressure Valve: Will disable the cell permanently if the pressure is too high in the cell (Can be due to over charge).
PCB: Will protect against over discharge, over charge, and over current, depending on design. The PCB will reset automatically or when placed in a charger.
I’d say without seeing the circuit diagram of the shield and how/if it protects the batteries , impossible to say - also depends on how and where you intend to use it and whether the batteries will be stressed .
Do you know if any of those are included in the shield? I couldnt find much info online.
On one hand I dont want to pay double for protected batteries if its not necsesary, on the other hand I dont want to be a tight ass if its going to be majorly unsafe. There was something in the battery shield description about some kind of protection, but it was pretty vague.
Shields as well as libraries are often very useful, for users being short of knowledge. Sometimes they do the job, sometimes not.
The higher degree of safety You want the more You need to dig and work Yourself.
If you can, ie you're not building a drone, RC plane or something else where weight reduction is critical, I'd go for NiMH batteries, and appopriate charging systems for them, instead of Lithium. If NiMH batteries get really badly abused by a design mistake or anything else the worst they might do is smoke a little and make a shrot range spiting of slightly corrosive chemicals, this is compared to the horrific fireballs that lithium batteries, even protected ones, can release if things go only slightly outside design tolerances. Not sure if your existing battery shield would be much sue with NiMH, but there will be alternatives which can. Also, the per cell voltage of NiMH is quite low, so you'll likely need a big stack of them in series to get a usefully high voltage which can power a step-down regulator to the 5V you'll likely want. The good thng about NiMH is you can safely combine in series cells like this, which you dare not do with Lithium cells unless you have specialisec charge balancing circuits.
I agree with You but I want to add an experience I made. Buying NiMh cells and charger from the same supplier, using that fast charging, it was clear that fast charging just cocked, roasted, fried... the cells quickly, very quickly.
The DIYmore.cc site says the V8 has battery protection. But you might see if there's an 8-pin chip on the bottom that's marked 8205A. That's the dual mosfet typically used in the protection circuit. In the end though, to be safe you probably need to just test it once with an unprotected battery, and see how low the voltage drops before it turns off, and to make sure it turns off.
I tested my V3 and V8 (not DIYmore) with no batteries installed to see if I had continuity between the battery negative terminal and the output ground. The V3 did not have continuity, but the V8 did. Both have 8205A chips. The V3 uses a DW01 for the protection IC, but the V8 has protection built into the big controller chip. So maybe the V8 protection is on the high side. I don't know.
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