Over the season, I’ve had quite a few rechargeable AAA batteries cause the red led on the charger to flash. I have assumed that this means that the battery is no longer any good. Is the true?
If so, it looks like the mortality rate for those batteries is really high. In that case, what do most teams do - just use Duracell?
flashing red is half charged
We’ve always wondered what exactly the flashing means, too.
It doesn’t mean the batteries are actually bad because we usually are able to just take the batteries out and put them back in or move them and the flashing stops.
I also don’t think it means they are half charged because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some batteries keep flashing indefinitely until we take them off, while others never seem to flash throughout charging.
I’ve never seen our AAA chargers flash, but it may be a circuitry thing. The light means that the battery is charging, so maybe the battery is only partially in the charger or the charger has some internal wiring issue and the circuit gets interrupted intermittently. I don’t actually know.
What our mentor told us was that they were already charged, and when it blinks it means to take them out so they don’t overcharge or get damaged
blinking is half and no lights charged
I also have seen this often at a competition. I was able to find the manual which says that blinking means a short circuit. Here is the link: http://content.vexrobotics.com/docs/instructions/276-1622-INST-0312.pdf
The information at the link above seems to imply that flashing lights mean the battery is bad. If that’s the case, I’ve had tons of batteries go bad this season. I’m not happy about that.
I think I need to post on the official tech site - maybe there is something wrong with my charger or something.
Yeah, so it says blinking indicates a fault and it mentions several possibilities. This doesn’t mean your batteries are necessarily bad, just remove them and try again. If it always blinks with the same battery, then it might be bad.
The takeaway is that the VEX chargers aren’t all that great, which I think we already knew.