Comments on: Tips for using the La Crosse AlphaPower BC-900 Charger

By: DE Cho

DE Cho — Tue, 05 May 2009 20:00:05 +0000

“La Crosse Technology BC-900 AlphaPower Battery Charger can not be shipped to the address you selected”

So much for “or Canada”.

By: Gyro John

Gyro John — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 01:45:10 +0000

Jespard: You asked: “Can you test non-rechargeable batteries?”

Short answer: Not with a Lacrosse BC-900.

Long answer: You “might” manage to test the capacity of a non-rechargeable battery, but then you would throw it in the garbage. You see, in order to test the battery’s capacity, the charger wants to:
1. Fully charge the battery (and you are not supposed to attempt to charge non-rechargeable batteries in the Lacrosse charger – that may damage the charger).
2. Discharge the battery to some fully-discharged state – maybe 0.9v? – at a known discharge current, and while timing the test.
2a. Battery capacity is then computed as (discharge current in mA) x (hours of discharging) = battery capacity in mA hr.
3. Recharge the battery so it is once again usable. This is the part where your non-rechargeable batteries would run into trouble!

You may be thinking of a simpler – more common? – type of battery testing called “load testing”. In that case, a load is briefly applied to a subject battery and the battery voltage monitored. A highly-charged battery will have a higher voltage than a nearly-discharged battery and thus a rough estimate can be made of whether the battery is near full or near empty (while removing some charge from the battery – you wouldn’t want to test it for an hour!).

By: Jespard

Jespard — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:10:11 +0000

Can you test non-rechargeable batteries? Frequently I want to know the status of non-rechargeables. What about lithium non-rechargeables? Thanks for the great article!

By: Photographic Thoughts » LaCrosse BC-900 - TechnoLine BC-900

Photographic Thoughts » LaCrosse BC-900 - TechnoLine BC-900 — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 09:31:40 +0000

[...] Een interessant linkje waar je ook een manual kan downloaden: http://www.robertphotoblog.com/2006/tips-lacrosse-bc-900/ [...]

By: Yardboy

Yardboy — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 22:09:22 +0000

Note that an over-discharged battery can be shorted from a charged battery in just a few seconds to give it enough juice to register in the charger. Essentially you 1) unplug the charger, 2) load a charged battery and the NULL battery next to each other, 3) short the + terminals of the two batteries with a paperclip for a few seconds. When you plug the charger back in (after removing the paperclip) the battery will register.

There is a picture of this in the image gallery for this item at amazon.com.

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 00:48:14 +0000

You can buy the BC-900 in Singapore at EastGear Pte. Ltd. They have just relocated to 42 Horne Road. Call them first to check availability: Tel : (65) 6837-1582.

By: CS

CS — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 01:10:35 +0000

Where can I buy this in Singapore?

By: Nandiba

Nandiba — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 06:36:43 +0000

Tip for the European users. This charger is sold under the brand Voltkraft in EU. The Voltkraft IPC-1 is the same as BC-900, distributed by Conrad. The accessories are the same .

In the EU there is also a “light” version, called IPC-1L. The functions and features are the same but max. charge current limited 700mA and there is no 12V car adapter, bag and no batteries given. It is 20-25% cheaper. Who already has a collection of quality batteries and wont travel the charger, worth think of it.

Long-term user experience shows that L version is more reliable than the normal one.

Best regards,
Nandiba