Shadowx

can you overcharge the cygolites? I have the Hotshot pro 150. it say on the package to charge for 5hrs. Is that the time for a full charge, or is that the max charging time? Is there overcharge protection? The instructions said to refer to the package for charging information. I contacted cygolite a few days back but have not received a response yet.

DrIsotope

I put mine on the cable and leave it. When I come back, the light is on steady red (fully charged) and I take it off of the cable. Pretty much every device has charge protection built into it now. The harsh truth is that a typical lithium cell has (generally) 100 charges in it before the capacity starts to drop off, and by ~300 charges capacity will be less than half of when it was new. So if you ride every day, expect to replace things like headlights and taillights every 2-3 years... at best.

Hell, the capacity on my Garmin 520 is down to about 9 hours, from 15 when it was new. My Hotshot 150 has dropped off a bit, down to about 8 hours from ~10 when it was new.

noglider 

The potential damage from overcharging a lithium battery is serious, so chargers made for lithium batteries have overcharge protection in them. In other words, they have all been idiot-proofed. It's safe to leave it plugged in indefinitely, though it is even safer to unplug it after it's fully charged. Don't worry.

Shadowx

Thanks, what modes are you using? I was using steady pulse and killed it today. Rode it 3hrs, charged for an hour and a half and it died part way into my into my 3hr ride today. Is it making the flashes slower that makes the battery life longer? I'm thinking either daylight 6-37hrs, or triple flash 29-75hrs. doing more road riding.

DrIsotope

I use the 2-flashes per second mode during the day, and the slow pulse (slowed all the way down) at night. I love that Cygolite states "2-210 hours of runtime." First off, what mode dies in 2 hours? And what stays on for 210? I've never gotten close to either of those extremes.

Shadowx

Thats in steady, 2hrs at full brightness, 210 dimmed all the way down. I use zoom at night. trying to decide on my daytime mode, daylight or triple flash

steady 2-210
zoom 3-7.5
steady pulse 4.5-6
triple flash 29-75
daylight 6.5-37
random flash 5-30

Shadowx

I'm using a Fenix PD35 960lumens for my front light. it takes 18650 batteries which cost about 12-15 depending on what I get. I would prefer a larger unit that used a replaceable battery like the 18650 cells but nobody seems to make them except low output AA stuff.

DrIsotope

Looks like I'm going to have to go to triple flash for daytime on the Hotshot PRO 150-- still plenty visible, but like quadruple the battery life. I never had the old Hotshot 2 go dead on me during a ride even once, but the PRO is easily twice as bright, and I forget to charge it now and again. <lightbulb> I also still have my old Hotshot 2 in a drawer, I should use that one for steady-on-dimmed nighttime use.

canklecat

Modes significantly affect run time on my Hotshot 50, from as little as 2 hours on steady maximum brightness to 200 hours on minimum brightness.

The most efficient flashing mode is triple flash at 36-96 hours, depending on interval. But it's not the brightest flashing mode so I use it mostly at night. On triple flash I recharge only once a week.

The brighter flash/pulse modes are much more noticeable in daytime but I need to recharge after every longer ride. Zoom, steady pulse and random flash are pretty noticeable in daylight.

01 CAt Man Do

First question, No, the lamp is designed to stop charging when the battery is fully charged, even if left plugged in. Five hrs would be the typical time to charge if the battery is fully depleted. Yes, there is overcharge protection.

Please note, it is best if you charge the lamp after you have ridden more than three hours. Deep discharge makes a Li-ion battery age faster. Okay if it happens once in great while but try not to do too often. Regardless if you use the lamp a lot the battery will lose capacity over the years as others have suggested. In cold weather you want to charge the lamp after every ride. Small batteries hate cold weather and tend not to run as long when exposed to cold temperatures. Never recharge a Li-ion battery until after it has returned to normal room temperatures.

Shadowx

Got it, thanks, very helpful. Knew but kinda forgot the cold temps thing. Did not know the charge right away thing.

01 CAt Man Do

Sorry, I shouldn't of used the notation, "ASAP". I was just trying to point out that it is usually best to make sure you charge the lamp before the charge got too near to depletion. If the lamp has a half charge, it is perfectly fine to let the lamp sit until the next time you decide to use it again. Then again if you plan to use it the very next day not a bad idea to just go ahead and charge it. On the other hand if you don't plan on riding for some time, storing the lamp with a half charge is more preferable than storing with a full charge. All this is SOP for using Li-ion batteries and can help extend the usable life of the lamp / battery. With batteries this small anything you can do to help maintain capacity is going to help.

Garfield Cat

Faulty battery: what happened with those batteries that caught on fire? Is it because of the lack of or faulty over charge protection?

What happened to Boeing and their batteries that caught on fire in their aircraft? Because of design flaws?

a1penguin

I am paranoid and charge my lithium ion battery powered items only when I am home. Sh** can happen with Li-Ion batteries and I don't wish to torch my four cats. This is why I don't purchase the cheap no-name brand rechargeable rear lights or 18650 batteries. Hopefully the brand name products have better quality control which is factored into the higher price.

YMMV.

ItsJustMe

If you could overcharge it, they'd be catching fire every day. Anything with lithium rechargables HAS to have charge limitation on it. Don't worry about it.

DrIsotope

The thing to be careful with are devices like the cheap, super-bright LED flashlights that take a drop-in 18650 cell. Most often, those lights do not have low voltage cutoff circuits, so they can pull the batteries below 3.2V and cause them to explode. Overcharging a single cell is possible, overcharging a commercially sold lighting device is far less likely. R/C racers have been taking advantage of "over volting" lithium packs for awhile-- charging to 4.3 or even 4.4 volts per cell. It's not good for the longevity of the batteries, but it works.

We have very little to worry about in either case-- self-contained cycling-specific items like headlights and taillights have both overcharge and low voltage cutoffs, combined with absolutely tiny batteries-- about as much explosive energy as a pack of matches. I've watched an eighth scale R/C buggy have its 4-cell, 14.4V lipo pack punctured, and burn to the ground in less than 30 seconds. The cloud of white smoke filled the entire building.

Skipjacks

This.

The Cygolite has an auto cut off when it reached max charging....if it works.

Things do go wrong.

They are rare. I have 2 Cygolites and I am not scared about owning them. But I don't let ANYTHING charge while I'm out of the house. It only takes that 1 time where a safety feature fails for a fire to ruin your home.

This has happened on $800 iPhones. Not with any regularity and the odds of it happening are super small. But it only takes once. And if it can happen to an $800 iPhone that has fail safes built into both the phone and the charger it can happen to a $25 bike light with a battery that was sourced from who knows where being charged by a 4 year old phone charging block using a USB cord you got in a ******* jack box.

It's not worth losing sleep over this, but it's worth just waiting until you'll be home for a few hours to do any kind of battery charging.

Skipjacks

A bike tail light battery isn't going to blow out the windows of your house if it explodes. But if it gets hot and the plastic ignites it will drip flaming plastic on your floor or carpet and that kind of tiny fire can spread pretty quick.

If you're home, charge the darn things and don't worry about it. But be home when you're charging so you smell smoke or hear the smoke detector if something goes wrong.

The odds of it happening are tiny, but it only takes once.

And don't buy cheap untested imported junk products. The light might work fine but you have no idea what battery is in there, where it came from, how well it's made, etc etc etc. If a 6 bazillion lumen light with an all aluminum frame that cures the flu by touching it costs $12, the manufactured skimped on the quality of the parts.

01 CAt Man Do

You can't make a Li-ion battery explode by over-draining them. If that were true non-protected cells would never be sold. You can kill the battery by over-discharging an unprotected cell but that's about it. Otherwise most accidents with Li-ion cell occur when charging a damaged cell. Yes, it is possible to damage a battery when in use but good Li-ion cells do have protection build into the cell designed to cut off the current and to vent the cell. If this protection is compromised then yes, a damaged cell or one with a soft-short could cause a fire. If a battery is packaged well damaging a battery is pretty rare. Of course it does matter where and who is building the battery pack as to quality control. Someone who is building and selling packs using recycled cells is not only cheating the buyer but building possible time bombs.

I agree, a good idea to be present when charging Li-ion batteries but like most people I let my phone sit on a charger while I'm in bed sleeping. Rarely do I let my bike batteries sit on a charger when I'm not at home or overnight when I'm sleeping.

DrIsotope

Go look up the countless videos of people having their vape mods blow up from either low-voltage or overheat. And those are just run of the mill 18650s. You can absolutely blow up a Lithium Ion pack-- and with LiPo, which are in tons of devices, including cell phones-- those blow up all the time.

Seeing a pack degas for the first time is certainly an eye opening experience.

Skipjacks

You should totally close your eyes during an explosion, dude.

01 CAt Man Do

Vaping has nothing to do ( per say ) with the discharging capabilities of a Li-ion battery. Keep in mind the device used to vape is drawing electric current from the battery in order to produce heat which is then used to produce vapor. A faulty Vape device could possible drain the battery at a rate that the battery is not able to handle and in doing so over-heat the battery through the part of the device designed to heat the vapor. In that kind of scenario a battery could indeed over-heat and blow up but only because of a device malfunction. If you discharge a Li-ion battery at a rate/time within the batteries listed parameters and keep it away from any kind of heat source the battery will simply discharge until the voltage charge is completely gone. Of course if the battery is damaged in some way ( through mishandling ) that is another matter completely and could exacerbate the problem if the battery protection or device were to catastrophically fail. Lesson to be learned, Vaping can be dangerous. Li-ion cells don't fair well when either discharged at too high a rate or exposed to a heat source that is just too close to the battery. Now combine both at the same time and you have a recipe for a new kind of facial reconstruction.
( not to mention that the liquid in the vape units are likely flammable and can add fuel for the fire. )

Yes, some cell phone batteries have caused fires. That's because there is always going to be a bad battery get through quality controls. No manufacturing or quality control process is 100% faultless. If you doubt this just look at the amount of automobiles that get recalled. Thankfully, likely 99.99% of cell phones don't have this problem.

Shadowx

most of those are from either a batter with damaged casing(shorted out) or over loading it it and draining it too fast, basically shorting it out.

bobwysiwyg

So, we are to believe vaping devices undergo the same quality control checks as Cygolite devices, etc?

01 CAt Man Do

Besides the thread not being about vaping devices...I wouldn't dare to assume what quality control is used on any product. Now if you have some supernatural insight into the world of quality control for any product ever made anywhere in the world then please, feel free to inform us ( O' Great One ). In my opinion a vaping device and an LED bike light have little in common ( design-wise ) other than the fact that they both use batteries. Based on that fact alone I wouldn't think the quality control would be identical ( but what the hell do I know ) .