Are my batteries borked?

Afternoon everyone.

I have four AA rechargeable batteries. Panasonic Eneloop Pro. They now won’t charge up, just flashing red lights. Any tricks to get more life out of them before they go on the bonfire? Now I’ve been using them most weekdays in a radio for about two years so not surprised if they’ve had enough. They’ve been amazing batteries to be fair and just bought some more. Just thought I’d see if there are any cool little tricks.

Ta

Weird they’d all expire at the same time, sure it’s not the charger that’s dead?

No, charger is charging up the new ones fine. All four have pretty much always been used in the radio, which takes four so…

It might be the voltage on the cells has fallen too low for the protection circuitry to allow charging. Do they immediately start flashing red when they’re plugged in to charge, or do you get a few seconds where they seem to charge OK and then fail?

If the latter, put them in the charger and power cycle them repeatedly using the wall switch for several minutes. This might get enough juice into them to let the charge run properly.

Not familiar with eneloop really but this trick has worked on old Hope and Makita Li-Ion batteries that I’ve accidentally deep-discharged in the past.

Some modern chargers are supposed to have ‘features’ that detect when a battery is dead.
I’ve found that when a charger says this, whacking it a good old-fashioned charger (that just charges the battery until full) gets around this.
Once I’ve force charged a battery its usually fine in the modern sensitive polite safety-concious politically correct charger afterwards

What’s the charger? Something half decent will offer you a refresh option.

I mean, yes, they’re probably dead, but it’s worth investing in a good charger.

So they might have got so low that they won’t register in the charger. THis might work…

Get a fully charged battery and some tin foil…

Fold a strip of tin foil into a sort of thin flat sausage shape – needs to be big enough to be able to touch two contacts of of the batteries when they are side by side. Make two of these strips.

Place a charged battery and one of your “duds” side by side with the plus’s and the minus’ at the same end.

using the tin foil strips connect both plus’ and both minus’ together and hold them there for 10 seconds or so. Basically you need to connect the plus’ and minus’ together. Anything metal will do for this but tin foil is easy to use. I sometimes use two knives.

Then try the “dud” in the charger again.

What I have poorly described above is pretty much what is in this video…

Thanks for the tips and tricks.

Nothing worked unfortunately, hardly surprising as they’ve had a hard life. Will try them in a friend’s charger before i recycle them. The charger is also Panasonic, same brand as batteries so possible the charger is just trying to make me buy more… 🙂

Panasonic charger

Some claim the eneloops are the same as IKEA ladda which are much cheaper – not sure if it’s true. I’ve got on well with 7dayshop’s version also.

This is the type of charger lots of people seem to recommend https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00N7GHUH0/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_ZDVHZD0R2HG9R1HWMF39?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Has different speed of charging options and refresh mode etc.