Group I have a Digitrax DT 402D throttle, and as you know 9 volt batteries can get expensive, and we must help our environment. Can you use rechargeable 9 volt batteries for the throttle? Will it cause any harm to the throttle, or to the system? If rechargeable batters can be used what type can be used Ni-MH OR Li-ion? What mAh, Such as 280mAh 600mAh, ect? Any advice will be grateful. Peace be with you, Arthur Sent from my iPad
Rechargable batteries, whether 1.5 volt, 6 volt or 9 volt batteries start of at less than their rated voltage when fully charged. There's nothing wrong with using them, no matter if they are NI-MH or Lithium. I never figured out if the charge would last as long as a regular carbon battery. But over the long run you will save some bucks using them. I have some older Radio Shack 9 volt batteries that are very hard to insert and remove from the case so I don't use them.
The below link will shed some light on this. Some don't thing Wikipedia is very good but don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-volt_battery Rich
Use the Powerex 9.6V rechargeable batteries. They won't harm the throttle and last quite awhile in use. Rich
Not necessarily. The cells are 1.2 volts, so a "1.5 volt" rechargeable battery will always have less. With higher voltage batteries, it depends on how many cells they use to make the battery. I have seen "9 volt" batteries with nominal voltages of 7.2, 8.4, 9.6, and even 10.8 volts. I have heard that with the Digitrax throttles you want to use one that truly is at least 9 volts or eight cells.
A lot depends on the device......I have a GPS I tried to use rechargeable batteries in, but due to the lower starting voltage, I got very short "run times" because the GPS would quickly read the lower voltage as "low battery" and shut down. The charge on the batteries was still good, but the voltage fooled the device. I also have a portable radio that deals with this by coming with 2 "dummy" batteries......it runs on 12 volts, so if you use regular batteries you put in 8 (8 X 1.5 = 12) and use the 2 dummies, and if you use rechargeable, you stick in 10 batteries (10 X 1.2 = 12).
I totally agree. My DT402D starts to become unreliable when the battery voltage drops to around 8V. Obviously, 6-cell (nominally 7.2V) batteries were useless, and 7-cell (8.4V) weren't much better. The answer was to use 8-cell (9.6V) batteries. Surprisingly, I found some Chinese made rechargeable batteries on eBay that work a treat, for less than AUD $4 each delivered to my mail box. I blogged about them here. It's now been three years since I bought the batteries, and they're still working great! Regards, Ron
