Battery Capacity Tester|Battery Tester

A battery tester or Battery capacity tester is an electronic device used for testing the state of an electric battery. Using a battery tester we can find out if an old battery is still alive or can be disposed. It is also called as a battery health tester.

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Why batteries need to be tested?

At home and office, you may find a number of used batteries lying around not disposed yet. Sometimes, out TV remote dont work, and we doubt which of the two batteries gone dead or both.

There are some conventional methods used by everyone like bouncing of batteries, Licking at the tip of battery(not at all recommended), but in this post, you can see the most effective way of testing a battery if it is good or not.

To know the exact charge of the batteries, we can make use of a multimeter. We will see how to test a battery with and without a multimeter.

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Test a battery’s Health without Multimeter

The method, we use to find battery’s health condition without a multimeter is using a battery tester ,ie, Battery Health Tester or Battery capacity tester.

Lets see how to use a battery tester for diffferent batterieslike button batteries,AA Batteries, AAA Batteries,C,D,1.5V and 9 V batteries.

Battery Tester Universal Battery Checker for AA ,AAA C D 9V 1.5V Button Cell Batteries

What is a battery capacity tester?

The below shown the picture of a simple analog battery health tester. Its very easy to use. We just need to properly place the battery to be tested in the battery tester.

Different Models of battery health testers are available for testing batteries, but we use this type of Battery tester.

Testing AA 1.5 V Battery using Battery Tester

for Testing AA or AAA 1.5 V Battery wth Battery Tester, the positive terminal (+) of battery is kept (+) mark side on the battery tester and negative terminal (-) is kept at the (-) mark side.

Testing 9 V Battery using Battery Tester

for Testing a 9 V Battery wth this Battery Tester, it should be kept as shown in the above fig.

the positive terminal (+) of battery is kept (+) mark side on the battery tester and negative terminal (-) is kept at the (-) mark side.

How can I test if my battery is good?

The above given battery tester has a display scale, which is given below.

Here you can see REPLACE (in Red), LOW( in Yellow) and GOOD( in Green). during testing of battery, the needle will move and based on the position of the needle, you can understand the health of the battery.

If the needle points inside RED : The battery is almost dead and neeed to be replaced.

If the needle rests inside YELLOW: The battery voltage is low, and on the way to die.

If the needle points inside GREEN: The Battery condition is GOOD and can be used.

You can do the test with a fresh working battery also.

Which brand battery you use for AA and AAA? Here is our Favourite.

Working of a Battery tester

A Battery tester works by applying load and monitoring the voltage and current of the battery.

When the conductive elements of the tester touch both the positive and negative contacts on the battery, the current will be released and can be measured.

How can I test a battery without a battery health tester?, then comes the use of a multimeter.

Testing of battery with multimeter

To measure the voltage we simply need to select the dc function on our multimeter and then we connect the red lead to the positive terminal and the black lead to the negative.

An affordable multimeter for home or Lab use is given here.

This will give us a voltage reading .Lets consider battery is rated at 1.5 volts.

If the battery is good, when we test it we may get 1.593 volts also, the two values are close but usually not the same.

when the battery is dead or dying we get, a lower voltage.

for example reads 1.07 volts so, it’s completely dead.

However, sometimes we could still get a voltage of around 1.5 volts even if the battery is of no use .

So, to fully test the battery we need to test it under a load condition to check whether it’s still useful .

To test battery under a load

to test the battery under a load condition, we need a resistor.Let’s take a resistor of around 100 ohms. but it doesn’t have to be exactly this value though.

We can connect the resistor between our two probes in this case we can use some crocodile clips to connect the resistor between the probes like this.

This way current will flow through the resistor and we can take a voltage reading.

if the battery is still good, then the voltage level will only drop slightly.

for example this battery has a rated voltage of 1.5 volts, and with no load it is 1.593 volts, with the resistor connected we take a reading of 1.547 volts so this battery is still good

But, if the voltage has dropped, when we connect the resistor we can understand that this battery has run out of charge.