[Metropropolis]

My neighbor's old-school 12V car-battery charger worked like a charm to power my Oxalic Vaporizer.

So I went out and bought one. But it didn't work as expected.

Turns out that the one I bought has a "safety feature" that requires it to detect voltage at the other end before it turns on the juice.

I gather this is a pretty standard feature on any basic car charger.

I've experimented using a car-battery inline between the charger and the OAV, and it worked.... but this only confirms the behavior, and is not a practical or sensible workaround.

For the electrical Gurus: Is there a simple trick or workaround to get the car battery charger to power my OAV, either by disabling this safety feature, or tricking it into thinking there's voltage at the other end?

 

[drlonzo]

a simpler trick would be to go to a garage sale and pick up an older model that doesn't have this feature.

This feature is just like in an alternator in a car. The bridge rectifier is set up on a switch circuit that senses voltage and turns on and off the circuit. This type of charger is known as a switching power supply.

To get around this problem, you would have to know exactly what you were doing with electronics. Not an easy task for someone that has no background.

Look on craigslist for an older model or put an want add out for one would be my suggestion. You want a continuous supply, not a switching supply.

 

[Rader Sidetrack]

Well, a 'simple trick' is to put a battery across the the leads so that the charger does see a voltage.


From the perspective of tricking the charger, it doesn't have to be a big heavy battery - a 12 volt motorcycle battery would work. In effect you are using the battery to power the vaporizer and supplementing/recharging the battery all at the same time.

Note that I am not necessarily advocating this approach. If you can find an older charger as Thomas suggests, that is a less complicated approach and may be lighter to carry around.

......

Oops, now I see that you have already figured out using a car battery with the charger - so all I can suggest is a smaller battery is easier to carry around.

 

[Michael Bush]

>Turns out that the one I bought has a "safety feature" that requires it to detect voltage at the other end before it turns on the juice.
>I gather this is a pretty standard feature on any basic car charger.

It is now, which is why they are worthless. They will only charge a battery that already has some juice. They will NOT charge a totally dead battery. When I pull out a charger it's usually because I have a totally dead batter and those will not work on them. Give them to someone who would otherwise spend their money on a charger, or save them for AFTER you charged the batter on a real charger to top them off and turn off before it overcharges the battery, but they don't work to charge a DEAD battery. The automatic ones are great to KEEP a battery charged without overcharging it, but they are worthless for charging a dead battery. There are some out there still that are not automatic, but they are harder and harder to find.

You want one that is described as "Manual". You do not want one that is described as "Automatic".

http://www.amazon.com/Schumacher-SE...ef=sr_1_10?s=automotive&ie=UTF8&qid=1413373551&sr=1-10&keywords=battery+charger

 

[dsegrest]

I bought a lawn tractor battery which works great, but I screwed up and bought a cheap charger, that doesn't indicate when the battery is charged or how much. It also does not cut off automatically. I am afraid to use it.

 

[Michael Bush]

>but I screwed up and bought a cheap charger, that doesn't indicate when the battery is charged or how much. It also does not cut off automatically. I am afraid to use it.

You bought the right charger. It will actually charge a dead battery where the automatic ones just refuse to do anything for a dead battery... Charge it for an hour and start the thing. The alternator will take care of the rest. Besides a couple of hours of charging isn't going to hurt anything. It's when you go a very long time with no shutoff that it's an issue. Most of the manual ones have two settings also. Once you've charged about a hour on the high one, you can set it to the lowest one and leave it for quite a long time with no damage if you really want to. But nothing is more worthless than a charger that won't charge a battery if it's dead...

 

[WWW]

I use an automatic charger with my vaporizer but to make it work I had to open it up and bypass the circuit board which controls the charger, it's been a while since I done this modification so I don't remember exactly what wires I moved to accomplish this. I keep the charger in a box with my other OAV supplies and only use it for that purpose.

 

[johno]

Some of the automatic batt chargers have a slide switch marked "start" to help with cranking the engine with a bad batt. For a dead battery if you switch to start for about 5 minutes then switch to charge the battery will normally start to accept the charge as there is normally a little residual voltage in the battery from the 5 minutes of "start". If I want to use this charger to run my vaporizer I just switch to "start" and have no problems. But as the alternator of my ford focus failed on the way home from Dulles int. airport I bought 2 12 volt batteries to get me home so never use the charger for vaporizing anymore
Johno

 

[Acebird]

How many watts is the heater? Maybe a laptop supply will work. When it comes to a resistive load the voltage is not that critical. What matters is the current. You can use a current supply.

 

[jwcarlson]

My neighbor's old-school 12V car-battery charger worked like a charm to power my Oxalic Vaporizer.

So I went out and bought one. But it didn't work as expected.

Turns out that the one I bought has a "safety feature" that requires it to detect voltage at the other end before it turns on the juice.

I gather this is a pretty standard feature on any basic car charger.

I've experimented using a car-battery inline between the charger and the OAV, and it worked.... but this only confirms the behavior, and is not a practical or sensible workaround.

For the electrical Gurus: Is there a simple trick or workaround to get the car battery charger to power my OAV, either by disabling this safety feature, or tricking it into thinking there's voltage at the other end?

Go buy an old one.

 

[mathesonequip]

Well, a 'simple trick' is to put a battery across the the leads so that the charger does see a voltage.


the correct answer.

 

[bison]

If you don't have a lot of hives to vaporize, I'd suggest getting a self-contained 12v power station (about $50). They combine a battery and charger, are easy to transport, and can be used as intended also (backup 12v supply and emergency jump starter). Perhaps a lot easier than messing with a battery charger, extension cord, and battery to trick the charger.

 

[dsegrest]

>but I screwed up and bought a cheap charger, that doesn't indicate when the battery is charged or how much. It also does not cut off automatically. I am afraid to use it.

You bought the right charger. It will actually charge a dead battery where the automatic ones just refuse to do anything for a dead battery... Charge it for an hour and start the thing. The alternator will take care of the rest. Besides a couple of hours of charging isn't going to hurt anything. It's when you go a very long time with no shutoff that it's an issue. Most of the manual ones have two settings also. Once you've charged about a hour on the high one, you can set it to the lowest one and leave it for quite a long time with no damage if you really want to. But nothing is more worthless than a charger that won't charge a battery if it's dead...

I am not using the charger in a vehicle. I am only using it for my vaporizer.

 

[Nabber86]

You are thinking/working too hard on a solution.

Use charger to charge battery. Carry battery to hives for treatment. Yes a battery is heavy, but it beats dragging an extension cord across the yard.

or,

Dump the charger and drive truck to hives and use the truck battery.

 

[bean tree homestead]

or,

Dump the charger and drive truck to hives and use the truck battery.

I use jumper cables off my truck so I dont have to pull in too close.

 

[cata_rebel]

I have the new charger to and I used it to heat the wire on frames to install wax foundation

You need voltage meter and if you open up the charger before the safety switch you will have voltage
Easy is to check the voltage before safety switch and 12 V Clams In some point you will find voltage
Then I solder wire with small clams at the end (make sure is well insulated) because you will have voltage all the time between this wire and 1 of the clams is the charger is powered
Don’t charge battery whit this wire!!!!!!!!! Charge the batteries whit the original what come whit charger
They have this kind safety because batteries can explode!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Metropropolis]

Thanks for everyone's replies. Beesource is knee deep in tinkerers and creative thinkers, and this thread didn't disappoint.

The suggestions of going to a garage sale and buying an older charger are sensible, but the risk is that I'd go to 20 garage sales and not find one.

At this point, I've obtained a small 12V UPS battery which I can use inline to get the juice flowing - For my purpose this works much better than storing/transporting a car battery.

I've also obtained a 12v/2A computer power supply, which I'll be direct-connecting to my OAV - Should work, but how fast remains to be seen.

This all allows me to test a few different scenarios.

It will be interesting to see what is learned, particularly in terms of cost/convenience/efficacy.

Will update in a few days.

Thanks again for everyone's responses.

 

[Rader Sidetrack]

Both of the vaporizers that snl sells are 150 watts, and I suspect that competitive products are similar. At 12 volts that works out to 12.5 amps. I would expect that a 12 volt 2 amp power supply would not produce desirable results.

 

[Pete O]

If you know someone with some electrical/electronic knowledge, they can direct you to buying a 12v transformer. Transformers are cheap and the vaporizer doesn't care if it sees DC or the AC from a transformer. Myself I use a 13.6V power supply; just search on Ebay for "power supply 13v" and one that is rated for 10 amps. They are not expensive.

 

[mitchgobears]

I just use my battery car jump starter (example: http://www.amazon.com/Schumacher-XP.../dp/B004EIDD2Q/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1413500732&sr=8-10&keywords=jump+starter). You can buy them cheap, charge the with an extension cord, a easily carry them to where your hives are.