Is it possible to charge V5 Batteries with laptop chargers? I know… stupid question, but our team has no access to laptop chargers and we desperately need to test and can’t wait until winter break ends. Does anyone know if it’s possible?
Assuming that’s what you mean…
But the official V5 charger is only $9.99, so you might as well just buy that instead of trying to figure out compatibility with whatever laptop chargers you have.
I used my Toshiba laptop charger and our battery still works fine but I would say it is not optimal to say the least and you’ll probably get yelled at by someone else on the forums.
That doesn’t really mean anything, because even a single brand often has multiple different chargers with different specifications.
You really should be careful plugging in arbitrary DC plugs into things.
This isn’t like USB where there is a standard and it’s all interchangeable.
Even if you do find a compatible laptop charger, keep in mind you can only charge V5 batteries for competition with the VEX V5 charger (it’s in the game manual in the robot section somewhere, and in the v5 inspection sheet).
VEX decided to use a very standard DC jack for charging. It is the same size as that used on a lot of 12V DC power adapters. BUT this does not mean they will properly charge your battery. The V5 adapters have an output of 16V 1.1A if you have an identical charger you may be able to use it to charger your batteries(its quite a unique adapter so this is unlikely).
I strongly recommend you just get the proper V5 adapter and use that.
Unfortunately the vex store is kind of down rn and we can’t wait until then, I’ll take a shot at some of the recommendations on the forums.