18650 Charger

[TorqueRanger]

I have a couple projects that use a 18650 cells and  does anyone know a good charging circuit for these ??
Thanks

[Rick Law]

I have a couple projects that use a 18650 cells and  does anyone know a good charging circuit for these ??
Thanks

I personally like the TP4056 for random applications and do implement the temperature monitoring.  You can roll-your-own or get one of those $2 boards online.  Most of the TP4056 boards do not implement the temperature monitoring but some has it.  For the most part, you wont need temperature monitoring.  But when you do have a bad cell, that could save your house from burning down.


For day-to-day charging, I use a consumer grade charger.

[Stonent]

The store Five Below in the US has a number of cheap power banks for under $5.  The small ones that are 18650 sized have one inside.  You could just desolder it and put in a 18650 battery holder.  I believe it has that exact chip mentioned previously in it.

One of them that I got looks like a Lego brick and has 1 cell inside but molded for 2 cells. 

If you just want a lot of power on demand, they do have a 6600mAH pack for $5 has 3 cells inside it.  Since it came out, the other single cell ones have dropped in price.

Here's a teardown video that someone else did on that one.

[doobedoobedo]

Another vote for the TP4056 https://dlnmh9ip6v2uc.cloudfront.net/datasheets/Prototyping/TP4056.pdf they're ubiquitous in chinese stuff. Cheap as chips and do the job.