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$10 Lead Acid Battery Charger — Parallax Forums

$10 Lead Acid Battery Charger

ercoerco Posts: 20,244
$10 for one https://www.amazon.com/Automatic-Battery-Charger-Maintainer-Motorcycle/dp/B014QXL438

Or two for $18 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B082X75Z3M

The world has gone mad for LiPos but many rolling robots (Arlo, HERO, etc) can still make good use of old school lead acid cells. I paid $12 a few months ago for this small 1.2A automotive chargers for my Corvair while I'm working on it. Works great to charge and float at ~14.4V, better than those HF float chargers which won't charge a low battery. It also charges SLA batteries just fine, potentially useful for mobile robots. I added the $1 DVM display in the photo. It comes with a simple LED smiley face, red=charging, green=floating. Good enough for ordinary people. :)

Now Amazon offers it for $10 or a 2-pack for $18. I'm trying to resist buying more but it's a great deal and this hoarder's mouse finger is getting itchy...

Comments

  • I'm not surprised why the Hero family of bots wore them. Same goes for ARLO. I once looked into building a purely custom bot. One of the books I read on it wanted the user, to use them, and why? I'm glad someone asked, it is because of the weight.



    That's strange, the Scooby style bot, who was assembling a second of himself in Mike's yard, and they are bringing with them the supplies to build a third.
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,244
    Cye also used SLA. It's the ultimate dead reckoning robot, and surely the weight of the SLA reduced slip and improved traction & repeatability.

    http://www.pioneernet.net/johnc/buyrobot.htm

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