Ogre's Opus

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Love the review @SmilingOgre. I’ve been using the 3100 for almost a year now, and it’s been flawless. The fan only kicks in when I’m draining and re-charging. Knowing how many mah’s you actually put back INTO the batts when charging is a nice plus. Nicely done.

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Thank you so much for posting this!!! Mine is brand new to me and obviously I can’t talk about how it will work over time. Am thrilled to hear it has been going for a year without problems. Glad I took the chance on this one.

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Yup…it’s a good charger that doesn’t get enough street credit. @ozo turned me on to it over a year ago and it’s my regular charger.

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Similar story here. I PM’d a guy on another forum who obviously knew a lot more about chargers than I do and it was one of his recommendations. From watching Mooch I was able to put together a list of what I wanted the charger to do. It’s not terribly expensive for what it will do either. I’m pretty impressed with it.

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Same same.!! :slight_smile: Works good still.

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Two points and counting for @ozo!!!

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2 and a half years here on the 3100.
Continues to perform flawlessly!

Nice review!

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Alright! I would say this ones a winner. Thanks for the shout!!!

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Same here bro. same here :wink:

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OPus is one of the better chargers…i learned of it on the flashlight forum…there is a danish guy there that does intensive testing…after reading his report i got 2 …love them…before vaping …I used a nitecore charger for my flash lite batteries…i think it did more harm to them…cut the life cycle down …then i got a Xtar VC4…which i still use…then 2 opus which i use for vape batteries…best charger i own now…

Also forgot to mention …great review Ogre…well done…

PS…I do reccomend blowing out the fan with a can of air monthly if you have pets or dusty…
I would reccomend this charger highly

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I’m happy with my Opus C-3100 v2.2 but the fan is a big PITA. I’ve just ordered 2 new fans because right from the get-go it started making awful noise. Since they sell these things specifically for this model, I figure it’s a very common problem so I ordered 2 in 1 go.
The other thing I miss is a little beep or other type of signal to indicate the batteries have been charged. They do lose charge quickly when left unattended in the charger.

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I got wind from one other person on another forum that he also had a fan that was noisy. Doesn’t sound as bad as yours from what I sensed but non the less noisy. I try to keep beeping things out of the house. Everything makes noises today. My cell phone makes one that I still haven’t figured out, lol.

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It’s like this

I’ve seen some chargers that have bluetooth and will message your phone when done. Any signal would help really, an LED, vibrating phone, beep

By the way, those replacement fans are dirt cheap, I got them from aliexpress or gearbest

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Very cool! Great add. Pluck and replace, very thoughtful. Nice design!

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I’ve never experienced that.

Mine actually continue to charge (usually only a trickle charge; ie only 50-100ma) if the charger senses a drop. [That is, only once there’s been a full charge applied to the batteries, and only if they’re left for an extended period.]

It feels like something’s amiss in your situation…

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From the manual, and I can confirm my charger operates like this:

Charge Mode: The rechargeable battery is charged up to its
maximum capacity. Accumulated charging capacity is
displayed at mAH display mode. For Ni-MH or Ni-Cd
batteries, after charging mode is completed, a trickle charge
current (around 10mA) will be applied. For Li-ion battery,
once charge mode is completed, no trickle charge current
will be applied. When Li-ion battery voltage is dropped less
than 4.0v, then charging will be activated until battery
voltage reaches 4.20v

Trickle charging Li-Ion batteries is very damaging to the batteries, which is why this charger doesn’t do it.

This is a very interesting video from Mooch on the topic

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It does do a similar trickle charge on Li-Ion, but it’s before they’re fully charged, and it IS NOT harmful to the batteries in any way.

Mine usually goes into trickle mode before the batteries are fully charged, but after the majority of the charging is done. And you might be mistaking this for thinking they’re fully charged. (You might not, but unless you’ve spent quite a few times of watching the actual behavior… It’s really easy to misunderstand what’s going on.)

The device charges at “full speed” (whatever current you’ve chosen to apply [I almost always use 500ma]) until it gets near full. At which point, it goes through a new set of readings, reevaluates, and tops off the remaining charge in “slow” mode (aka trickle charge). Once this process has completed, then there is no further trickle charge applied. At least on mine.

I have a LG HG2 (brown) that’s been sitting in the charger for 8 hours and 19 minutes now, shows as full, no charge is being applied (trickle or otherwise), and is at a steady 4.14v.

FWIW, I’ve also got a set of Samsung 25r5’s (originally rated at 2500mah) that STILL charge to 1900mah, and another set of two (25r5’s) that still charge to 1800mah. They were put into service two months apart from each other over two years ago, and have always been charged on the 3100.

Now, again, this is all written from the standpoint of owning, and using, a v2.2 version of the 3100. If yours is different, then I can’t say with certainty. I can only share the experience I’ve had.

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It depends on what you call “trickle charge”. I do know that when the charge is getting close to full, the speed of charge (amperage) drops tremendously. I won’t claim I’m the expert who knows everything, I always assume that it’s harmful to the battery to charge it full speed when it’s close to full.
This is however not a trickle charge. A trickle charge is a continued charge of around 10mA to keep the battery fully charged. It is harmful to Li-Ion batteries because they are limited in amount of cycles they can go through, unlike other types of batteries that do benefit from a trickle charge AND Li-Ion batteries do not like it to be fully charged or fully discharged. Unless you need the charge, you’re best to leave your batteries in a half-charged state. (edit: this is not ME claiming this, this is from Mooch, see video above)

What happens with the Opus C3100 is that it charges up to around 4.1V at the mA you’ve selected, then it drops down more and more until it completely stops at 4.2V. At that point, the charger will display Full instead of the charge and it will keep displaying this whether the charge is 4.2V or drops all the way to 4.01V.
If you click on the Display button, you will see the current charge of the batteries and if they’ve been in there for a while, you’ll see your batteries are no longer at 4.2V. Instead, they’'ll display 4.14V, 4.11V, 4.17V or even lower because they’ll never charge to Full at the same time and they’ll slowly lose their charge. As far as I know, every charger has this issue.
I don’t care that much that they drop a bit, but my OCD can’t cope with this uneven discharge, which is why I say I’d like a signal when they’re done. I’d be happy if they all charged to 4.15V and give a signal so I can take them out of the charger and keep my married sets evenly charged.

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As I mentioned on youtube:
Feature wise that looks like a lot more of a charger than my new i4. and more thought was put into the design such as the fan and the batteries slide moving the cells away from the display.
Thanks for the review!
:+1::+1::+1::+1::+1:

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