Having described what cells this charger is capable of charging let's take a look and the rest of it's specification.

The charger has a backlit LCD display which is used for programming the charger as well as displaying charge data during the charge of a cell or pack. The charger also has temperature protection, high and low voltage protection and also capacity input protection. Effectively this means that the charger will terminate its charge or discharge if the pack goes over temperature, over or under voltage or an attempt is made to charge beyond the capacity limit of the pack or cell.

The charger will also do discharge of packs providing they are nickel cadmium or nickel metal hydride based. In addition to the above functionality the charger can be connected to a PC. Through software installed on the PC it is possible to program the charger as well as monitor the entire charge or discharge process using the software's inbuilt graphing capabilities. The PC software can also be used to upgrade the firmware within the battery charger. The charger comes supplied with a temperature probe which is connected to the temperature port on the side of the charger (pictured above).

This charger is somewhat unusual in terms of its power requirements. It requires 15 V to 24 V input voltage in order to function correctly. If you wish to charge 4S lithium packs or larger cell counts in nickel cadmium or nickel metal hydride packs, then you must provide the charger with around 20 V input voltage or it will not charge correctly. Century-rc provide two transformers capable of converting to the required input voltage. I tried both of these devices and had the greatest success with the 22 volt switching power supply. This input voltage requirement is quite strange as almost every other European or US manufactured charger relies upon a 12 V input voltage. This effectively means that in order for this charger to function correctly you not only need to buy the charger but also the power supply. Century RC do offer one of their transformers free of charge when purchased with this particular charger. Unfortunately it is the lower rated transformer that they supply free of charge, which I found to be okay for 3S charging but nothing beyond this.

Below is a couple of pictures of the two transformers, the one on the right being my preference.

In terms of performance this charger behaves very similarly to any other lithium charger. Initially it charges at whatever amperage you have selected as the maximum charge current. As the pack starts to reach its maximum voltage the charger slowly decreases the charge amperage until it is just trickling in at 10 milliamps. Total charge time for any given pack is between 1 and 1 1/2 hours. Which is very similar to any other peak charger on the market (assuming of course that you have chosen to charge at 1C). Throughout the charge cycle the charger displays all the various vital statistics such as pack voltage, charge current and total amp hours already supplied to the pack. Again this is fairly standard stuff and what you would expect of any medium quality lithium charger on the market today.

What separates this charger from those medium quality chargers is that this charger comes with some software and the ability to connect it via a serial cable to the PC. The supplied software graphs the entire charge or discharge cycle and allows you to save this data for future reference. The following pictures illustrate various packs that I have charged and the resulting graphs.

The top graph shows a discharge and then charge of a nickel cadmium four cell pack, the two graphs below it show standard charging of a lithium polymer pack. On the second two graphs I have put the data cursor on the screenif to show the data for each measured value. This is the yellow box showing the time of charge, the voltage of the pack, the charge current and the resistance of the cell. The application also allows the export of the graph data into a CSV file. Data showing previous charge and discharge cycles can therefore be saved for comparison over time.

Although the charge data and graphs are quite interesting I do find myself wondering exactly what use I am going to put them to. Obviously these graphs may help to visually identify a damaged pack, they may also be used to store the history of pack charges which might allow for indication of wear and tear over time. Beyond this I haven't found a useful application for this data.

Conclusion

The charger does a good job of charging packs across the various types of packs that it supports. I can't fault the chargers operation as it does a very competent charge and discharge. The charger has a maximum output of 3.5 amps, which I see as a limitation for those of us with larger helicopters and therefore larger packs to charge. There is also the rather unique power requirements for this charger, which also concernes me as potential customers will need to buy the switching power supply in order to make this charger function correctly.

Outside of this there is the PC connectivity and the ability to graph the cycling, discharging or charging of various packs. I haven't found a good use for this data but it has proven interesting nevertheless.

The temperature probe built into the charger and supplied with it is a good idea and a nice safety feature as it will cut power to the charger should the pack get too warm/hot. This at least allows some trust in the charger to manage the charging of a lithium pack but I would still not too large or discharge lithium packs unattended.

Overall I think it is a competent charger, it is somewhat quirky due to the power requirements and also innovative due to its graphing capabilities. Personally I haven't found the graphing capabilities that useful and in many respects I found myself wishing that it was able to monitor individual cells rather than the whole pack. At least with individual cells the data would allow an assessment of the health of the pack. As it is I think it is something of a novelty product in that having the data is quite cool but finding a use for it is another thing altogether.