I was using my Zippy 3 Cell battery to power my string of LEDs that I use over my work bench.
I forgot to unplug it before going home. The next day I see the LEDs are very faint, but still on.
I disconnect my Zippy 3 Cell LiPo battery and check the voltage. It's 7.4 V. I think, oh well, I wasted this one. I put it in my Turnigy Compact Charger E3 2S/3S charger. I bought both from HobbyKing by the way.
The charger flashes the 3 red LEDs stating that the battery is dead and can't be recharged.
So I thought, well let's charge it up another way and see if it takes a charge.
First, I put the battery on an area that was immune to damage from fire in case the Zippy exploded or caught fire. I hooked it up to my el-cheapo HY1803D DC power supply by Mastech.
I fed about the same voltage of the battery (7.4V) into the large gauge wires (the load side, not the wires that hook up to the charger.) I slowly raised the voltage with the amperage potentiometer at minimum.
I could see amperage jumping around between 1 A and 0 A. I tried to maintain about 30 mA. It didn't take long before I slowly raised it up to about 9 V with minimal current. I then hooked it up to the Turnigy charger, and it started charging again.
Next day I came into the shop, and it was fully charged.
One LiPo saved.
Hopefully this article will save more LiPo's from going into the landfill.
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