I've just purchased an Olympus D340R, which I'm quite pleased with. But I have a question about the Nickel Metal Hydride batteries I'm using. They are made by Telepower XL. The instructions with the charger state that the batteries should not be left in the charger for more than 14 hours at a time. What happens after that? I'd just as soon leave a set in the charger as spares. Any information will be appreciated.

Sincerely, Jay

-- Jay P. Klee (jayinnc@mindspring.com), May 02, 1999

Answers

I'm not sure about the Telepower brand specifically, though I have heard some general guidelines for NiMH batteries. Generally it's ok to charge continuously at up to 10% of the capacity. For example, with a 1200 mAh (milliamp-hour) battery, you could charge it forever with up to 120 mA with no ill effects. I suppose the energy is just dissipated as heat. Take a look at your charger current and battery capacity. Maybe you could buy a slower charger. Take a look at http://www.thomas-distributing.com. Hope this helps, -Ryan

-- Ryan Baucom (ryan.baucom@ieee.org), May 05, 1999.

We have a couple of the little cheapie MAHA trickle-chargers from Thomas Distributing around here (along with a bunch of other chargers). I forget the model number, but they're the wall units that hold 4 batteries and take forever to charge them - something like 24- 26 hours for a full charge on totally drained 1300 mAh cells. We just keep a couple of sets of batteries in them all the time, which is totally safe, since the current is so low, at <50mA. This way, we always have two totally fresh sets at any time. As noted above, the thing to be careful about is that the charger is actually tapering down to a trickle once the batteries are fully charged, or else you'll cook them in short order!

-- Dave Etchells (detchells@imaging-resource.com), May 10, 1999.