Perturbed with my red Venom pro charger

[gsbuickman]

When I bought my first all in 1 balancing charger for cycling nicd, charging NiMH and Pb & balancing lipos/life cells, I went with a 6A Turnigy Accucell 6 from HK. It was $20 shipped and had a built in xh balancer & came we with the a/c power supply.

That was a great Lil' charger and ran flawless no matter what I threw at it after 8-10 years it went on the fritz a and quit working. I started looking around at options for a new charger; but a lot of stuff was clearancesd out, and they were waiting on new models. I ended up buying the red model Venom pro charger.

It was as $50 from venom group Intl. Its a 5A all in 1 with external xh balancer, power supply & leads and adapters. I also bought the optional TP/FP balancer. Turns out this thing is identical to my old turnigy, or my pals iMax b6. Unfortunately it doesn't work as well as the cheap HK model .

If I am balancing 2s, 3s or 4s up to 6000mah it does fine. I picked up a pair of Venom 5000mah 25c 5s packs here @ OSE in December. When I got them they were storage charged. I ba!lanced them out w/o issue then re-storage charged them till spring.

I pulled them out of the lold pressure cooker I store my lipos in and checked them, they were fine. They have 19.75v @ 3.95v per cell. When I plug them in to balance them; I set the venom on 5s balance @ 5.0v. Sometimes it will start and run for 2 seconds, then the charger shuts down & restarts itself. If it doesn't reset.; it'll balance for 6 1/2 minutes@ 20.09 - 20.10v and 2.4 - 2.6A when the alarm goes off and I get a volume input error.

Depending how fast I reset the charger after the alarm, I it'll balance for 5 seconds to 1 minute before another volume input error. If I unplug it for awhile it'll run for another 5-6 minutes if I restart a 5s pack again. The charger stays cold to the touch, the cooling fan works fine and it doesn't even smell warm.We all know that hot electronics smell, so maybe a 5A setting just gives this thing a heart attack, idk ?

[kfxguy]

I have an issue like this with one of my venom lipos. The balance plug does not stay with a good connection all the time.

[gsbuickman]

Huh, i'll be damned.

I've tried to balance fthese 5s packs 30-40 times apeice with nothing but "input volume errors", when they read 19.75v @ 3.95v per cell.

I plugged in one of the venom 5000mah 5s packs a lil' bit ago, and what do you know. It balanced perfect until it timed out 90 min. later & I had to restart it .....

[high-tech]

I've had this volume input error and I solved it by using a better source voltage for my chargers, I run 2 of the Imax B6 chargers. I use laptop power supply instead of a 12volt power brick.

[gsbuickman]

Thanks H.T. , Ivo've got a few of those in my PC parts. I'll check the voltage on them. I did find a loose balance lead on one of my packs. I'all solder it PDQ. Thanks

[gsbuickman]

Well, I ended up soldering 2 balance leads up after another one came loose. She's balancing fine now