BC125AT: BC125AT battery issue

[WeBeCinYa]

I have a 125AT that’s about 6 months old and here lately the scanner will at best get an hour on a set of enloop batteries. I’ll get a battery low warning and swap them out but the batteries seem okay as once on smart charger they read almost full. This happens on multiple sets of batteries so I’m thinking it’s the scanner? Switch is set to rechargeable not alkaline. I only monitor 3 VHF channels with slow traffic so it’s not busy by any stretch.

Any ideas?


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[sibbley]

What type of charger do you have? Sounds like maybe your batteries need a discharge/refresh cycle. Some times, even with "smart chargers", overtime regular charge cycles will fully charge the batteries at lower mAh.

 

[W5JCK]

If you use the internal charger built-in to the scanner, then battery charge will be terrible as will the life expectancy of the batteries. When I first got my BC125AT and my BCD325P2 scanners, I left the batteries in them and kept the scanners plugged in to allow them to charge the batteries over night each night. The result was that the batteries would only run the scanners for about 2 hours before running down, and I had at least two sets of batteries that completely died after just a few months. Afterwards I did some research and discovered that these scanners have a really crappy charging mechanism and once I started using a good external charger the issues went away.

BTW, I never had an issue leaving the batteries in my BCD396XT, but it must have been designed better as far as charging goes. That third battery was a better setup to say the least.

 

[wtp]

yes, you said you have a smart charger. so you should be able to check the capacity of each cell.
do that with all of then and then group them together to get the best running time.
i just did this with over 30 cells. they might start out at 2500 but in a year they can be 1600 to 2000.
two of mine were even above 2300. isee the 125 takes 2 cells, so group then in two's from strongest to lowest and use them that way. a 2200 with a 2000 is ok but try not to use 2200 with 1500. and at less than 1200 they go to the solar lights.

 

[N4DJC]

In order to get a full charge the cells may need to be discharged to a lower voltage. As posted by @sibbley the NiMh batteries will still exhibit a bit of “memory” (voltage depression) after numerous discharge/charge cycles unless they are fully discharged at a low rate below a certain voltage level, usually .4 volts. The only safe way to get to that level is using a deep discharge charger. Repeated shallow discharge/charge cycles are usually the culprit. Does the BC125AT have a low battery voltage setting?

 

[kc2kth]

So my own two cents here, and I agree with the already posted comments about a conditioning cycle, I use the C9000 charger/conditioner and I actually condition my Eneloops or PowerEx batteries (I use and like both, Eneloops probably have an edge) at each recharge cycle. It's overkill, and I'm likely reducing the lifespan of the cells, but I'll take that over trying to remember the last time I conditioned a specific cell or group of cells. I have about 30 different AA size cells that I swap between four scanners, so keeping track would be tough. Generally I still get easily 4-5 hours on any of my scanners - 436, HP2, 125AT, or TRX-100.

 

[W5JCK]

FYI:
I just bought this EBL smart charger and EBL 2800mAh batteries for less than $20. I charged the batteries and tested them out today in my BCD325P2. I set the backlight to come on during squelch and monitored a P25 system and a conventional analog system. I got a bit over 7 hours of use before the low battery icon started flashing. Not bad at all. The BC125AT should get about the same result.