Battery Charger Options?

[Greyhame888]

*sigh* Another newb question...

I'm glad you guys are so accommodating lol.

Anyway, I recently bought a G&G M4 CQB, which uses 9.6V 1400mAh NiMH Crane Stock batteries.

I'm purchasing a second one, just in case, but I have a question. The charger that came with it only has an indicator light to tell me when it's fully charged, and I know from experience that overcharging a battery can drastically shorten it's capacity and lifespan, so my question is this;

Is it safe to leave a battery plugged into this type of charger overnight for example, like after the indicator has come on (assuming I forget or don't notice it). And if not, can anyone reccomend a good charger? (Keeping in mind that I am new to this and have already spent more than I planned to lol, so please don't recommend a $200 charger )

[Kuro_Neko]

It is safe enough to leave the battery plugged into that type of charger overnight. That said, what happens when that light comes on is it likely switches to trickle charge mode. That basically means that it keeps charging the battery, just at a much slower rate. The idea is since batteries slowly discharge on their own, the trickle charge should be just enough to counteract that. But since all batteries don't discharge at the same rate, with some batteries there's going to be some slight overcharging. It'll take a good long while for that to do any harm, but it'll happen eventually, so it's always best to disconnect batteries once they're charged.

Or you could get one of the NPT (Negative Pulse Technology) universal smart chargers. They only cost about $36 over at airsoftparts.ca and the NPT system keeps the battery charged without doing any harm. In fact it will actually reverse some of the damage in batteries charged with other chargers.

[Azathoth]

Any of these are good. you can get them at local hobby stores

http://www.duratrax.com/caraccys/dtxp4100.html