What battery chemistry in HC2?

[JRad]

I've read through most of the threads about HC batteries, and not one of them mentioned what chemistry the internal batteries are. NiCad, NiMh, or LiIon?

The reason I ask is to determine the best charge regimen for longest cell life.

My grand children are here and having a ball running trains in the garden with two RailPro controllers. My tendency is to put them on charge each evening to top them off for the next day's session. Depending on the chemistry, this could be good or bad.  LiIon prefers to be topped off rather than run down to cut-off. NiMh is kind of an in-between and NiCad should be run down flat before recharge or a charge memory develops.

With what I have read about run time on the latest HCs, I think it's probably best to run them at least until the battery indicator goes red. That would probably be 2 or three days at their current usage levels.

Opinions based on knowledge are appreciated.

Thanks!

[CPRail]

An excellent question!

Unless I have an upcoming session where I'll need a full charge, I run 'em into the ground before charging. If there is a need to charge for a session, you can set it so that it will stay on and drain the battery.

I'd love to hear what some heavy users (like Lee Nicholas) do for best practices.

[JRad]

I said I read through most of the old battery threads but I missed the one that said:

Originally posted by TS on the RailPro Users Yahoo! Group on Jun 13, 2015

Hello all,

I opened my HC-2 up and can confirm the batteries as follows (at least
in my unit).

Rayovac Recharge Plus
1.2v 2400mAH NiMH
AA size.

Knowing this it is probably best to run them down until the indicator at least goes Red, then fully charge.  Top-off won't kill them, but NiMh can develop a reversible 'memory effect' that limits capacity (run time). That can be fixed by cycling a full charge/discharge cycle a few times.

HC units that are stored for more than a month should probably be charged every 6 weeks or so due to NiMh self discharge.

[gregeusa]

The so called memory effect (caused by poor charger design) is not always reversible.

Like nicads, once the battery is damaged by internal shorts, you can "burn them out", but the battery has lost some capacity, and of course is likely to develop more internal defects assuming you are using the same charger.

"exercise" them yes, run them down hard, not necessarily