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Abetek 'RadCad' - 12 AA Caddy Charger


abetek

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got mine on friday.  having a fan was mentioned,  so not a surprise.  was hoping the fan would be more white noise but it’s a high pitched whine.  the battery caddy seems to be more friendly to exterior battery wear than any caddy i am using now.  it would have been nice to have a power supply with a detachable ac cord.  the attached cord may be a tad too short for some.  looking forward to see how it performs in the long run and would like to buy more battery caddies,  when they are available

 

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On 1/9/2019 at 2:01 AM, abetek said:

 

  • We had to put a 30mm fan in there - there was too much heat in the enclosure otherwise.  It measures about 28 dB at 1' ('whisper level') or 13 dB at 6' (comparable to pin drop).  So I wouldn't put it next to your boom, but there are camera battery chargers that are much louder

 

I bought 4 these. I think it’s a brilliant concept, most importantly because it saves valuable minutes in the morning, And I hope that it will also be gentler on the battery wrapper so that it won’t break so easily. 

I‘ve only had my first day with them today, and it all seems absolutely fine, it does what it is supposed to do. The whole design is pretty cool, as well, the display is useful. I like the kind of minimalistic Apple sort of way to product design. Keep it simple. Here that also applies to the packaging. Great!

and the clip to change the orientation of the batteries is awesome. 

 

I do want to mention a few things that bug me about this. The fan. It is much louder than I expected it to be, especially when four of them are going simultaneously. Now, I have other chargers with fans, most notably an IDX one for my NP-1. Its fan is probably louder, but it will switch off automatically when charging is done. The RadCad fan just starts as soon as it’s plugged in. And in addition there is no off switch. On/off switches seem to be a thing of the past, which is a shame. Instead now I have to add clunky off switches to the mains outlets, because I don’t want to keep unplugging them. All this may be fine at home, but in a hotel room this can get very annoying.  I wasn’t too thrilled about how loosely the batteries feel in the caddy, but I‘m beginning to think that it’s actually a good thing, because they slide in and out easier. 

That‘s it. The downsides shouldn’t keep anyone from buying this as it saves time, and that’s probably the most valuable aspect. In my case it also saves space and money, because I only need four of them instead of 6 8-bay chargers 

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I received mine today.  And have a few questions:

 

- Can you have various levels of mAh batteries charging at the same time; can you have 2 2450mAh and 6 2700 mAh charging at the same time?

- What is the lowest mAh battery that the charger will accept?

- Are there certain brands that do well or worst with the charger?

- How do you know after pressing the discharge button that the batteries are actually discharging? 

- Are the battery indicators suppose to flash to indicate charging cause mine goes from flashing with a green light to not flashing, red light when all the batteries are not even full.

 

I am using Powerx 2700 mAh batteries only on the charger. 

 

Gabe

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  • 2 weeks later...
3 hours ago, cstauffer said:

Anymore updates from users? SndSpd or Constantin? Also East Brooklyn Labs peeps, are you thinking about adding any of the suggestions from users so far to future builds/production runs?

 

CRAIG

 

I‘m still fairly happy so far as outlined above.  Two more annoyances, though: 

1. the fans in two of my four chargers have quickly started to make some ungodly noise now when switching them on. It sounds like they are revving up, but something is in the way so they revv more and it’s quite weird. And loud. It settles down after some time. Definitely need to unplug them if you intend to sleep anywhere near them. 

 

2. the little strip on the caddies which can change the direction of the batteries, by removing it from the bottom and putting it on the top part of the caddy has apparently loosened a bit and now it won’t always stay on. 

 

Both of those issues are fairly small, the charger works well. And I am still soooo very pleased by gow quickly I can now put my batteries in the charger and then out again. That easily outweighs everything else. 

 

Still, I bought these new just a couple of weeks ago, and it does leave me ever so slightly worried how things will progress in the nex two weeks

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7 hours ago, ramallo said:

 

No shipping to Europe?

 

Best

 

6 hours ago, KRF said:

No shipping to Australia?

 

On 4/5/2019 at 12:25 AM, East Brooklyn Labs said:

Eastbrooklynlabs.com is now live and accepting international shipping in addition we will have the additional Caddy available for sale on our website tomorrow.

 

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On 4/6/2019 at 3:40 PM, cstauffer said:

Anymore updates from users? SndSpd or Constantin? Also East Brooklyn Labs peeps, are you thinking about adding any of the suggestions from users so far to future builds/production runs?

 

CRAIG

Absolutely! that is what we do. We are monitoring all feedback we get and are happy to get your suggestions by email as well. We strive to make our products as satisfactory to our customers as possible and take all feedback seriously. We are as strong as our customers, Thank you.

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On 3/20/2019 at 9:14 PM, Sndspd said:

I received mine today.  And have a few questions:

 

- Can you have various levels of mAh batteries charging at the same time; can you have 2 2450mAh and 6 2700 mAh charging at the same time?

- What is the lowest mAh battery that the charger will accept?

- Are there certain brands that do well or worst with the charger?

- How do you know after pressing the discharge button that the batteries are actually discharging? 

- Are the battery indicators suppose to flash to indicate charging cause mine goes from flashing with a green light to not flashing, red light when all the batteries are not even full.

 

I am using Powerx 2700 mAh batteries only on the charger. 

 

Gabe

So after a few weeks...

- You can have various mAh batteries charging at the same time.

- The brands I am using currently on the charger are the PowerX 2700 and Panasonic Enelops Pro 2450 (Several years old)

- I haven't tried the discharge feature yet.

- The charger was acting a bit funny during the first few days.  It would start charging the PowerX batteries (Brand new) with a green light than go red light with no charging on the LED meter with a quarter to half charge; like the display stalled.  Sorry I have no pictures. :P  After a bit more fiddling on the power connector to the charger its working fine as intended.

 

As Constantin has mentioned, the fan is loud; from another adjacent quiet room, you'll hear it slightly with the door open.  Not ideal if your in a hotel room and have the charger going.  Also, I wouldn't travel with the charger, the plastic body seems like it wouldn't take a beating very well.  I disconnect the charger every time I use the batteries, though I pretty much do that with all my chargers.

 

The caddies are nice.  They don't seem to ruin the outer jacket of the batteries like the other caddies we are used too.

Gabe

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On 4/9/2019 at 7:51 PM, Sndspd said:

So after a few weeks...

- You can have various mAh batteries charging at the same time.

- The brands I am using currently on the charger are the PowerX 2700 and Panasonic Enelops Pro 2450 (Several years old)

- I haven't tried the discharge feature yet.

- The charger was acting a bit funny during the first few days.  It would start charging the PowerX batteries (Brand new) with a green light than go red light with no charging on the LED meter with a quarter to half charge; like the display stalled.  Sorry I have no pictures. :P  After a bit more fiddling on the power connector to the charger its working fine as intended.

 

As Constantin has mentioned, the fan is loud; from another adjacent quiet room, you'll hear it slightly with the door open.  Not ideal if your in a hotel room and have the charger going.  Also, I wouldn't travel with the charger, the plastic body seems like it wouldn't take a beating very well.  I disconnect the charger every time I use the batteries, though I pretty much do that with all my chargers.

 

The caddies are nice.  They don't seem to ruin the outer jacket of the batteries like the other caddies we are used too.

Gabe

Thank you so much for your feedback and we will take all this into account for future runs of this product. always happy to hear suggetions and feed back on our products.

Thanks

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