Auto battery select was NOT a good choise...

[eovnu87435ds]

Hey all,I recently found an unused li-ion battery from a nintendo DS phat(the old one).
The specs on the battery were 3.7v, 850mAh... not much, but o well. so I solder a deans connector to it, and plug it into my Mystery brand charger(same firmware and specs as iMax b5, with discharging features as well.) I set all the settings, I change lithium type to LiIo(3.6v) and try charging it. I get this message.
"Battery Check...
Over Voltage"

i fooled around to try and get it to charge, including putting it back to lipo(since its 3.7v) and still, the same error. This was really starting to bother me. I eventually put it back to LiIo mode, and for cell count I set it to AUTO, since nothing else worked. BAD MOVE! the "smart" charger thought it was 6 cell battery, and started pumping tons of electricity into it and instantly it lit up in flames, in my bedroom ontop of that!

So my questions are, 1. why wont this charge? and 2. I have a second DS phat attery lying around... is there a way to make it work with my charger?

[Tempted]

Did you happen to check the voltage on the battery before you stuck in on there?

[BrianG]

I wonder if there was some kind of circuit inside the pack/cell case?

[brushlessboy16]

Epic failure mike... i told you not to

at least you didnt get hot lithium on you...

[eovnu87435ds]

voltage was 3.5v when i plugged it in... I tried all the 1 cell li-ion settings, with no success... there possibly could be some special circuitry in the battery, but I'm not sure. it doesn't look like it from the outside.

[BL_RV0]

Looks can be deceving.

[suicideneil]

Rc battery chargers are for charging rc batteries- items like what you had have their own special chargers, with good reason.

Thats the second 'death by noob' occurance I've seen in one day, Im starting to get worried

[BrianG]

I've charged my cell-phone battery via r/c charger plenty of times and it worked fine.

[suicideneil]

I think the level of electronics experience/knowledge may be a telling factor there...

[lincpimp]

Some small lipos like the cell phone packs have a pcb with a lvc in the case. I had some nokia cell batteries (used 3 in sries for a tx pack) that would switch off at a certain point, and only my ice charger would switch them back on. Seemed like some cargers check the battery before applying any voltage, and that can lead to an error with the lvc...

[eovnu87435ds]

well that would definatley suck if I could only charge them in the ds... since it doesnt really work... it kinda throws out my option of a super small 7.4v pack. wait. I have a bunch of nextel batteries lying around(since the entire family switched to sprint.) before I try this again, does anybody know any special stuff about the nextel batteries and if they have exploding pcb's?