Hi Ron,
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Remember that you do not want to fully charge the battery on a regular basis. It will shorten the life of the battery cells (while extending the usable life). What I mean by this is that it will wear out the cells - not depress them. There's no cure for that but replacement of the cells.
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I read a very interesting article about our Insight batteries on Battery University, where the author recommended topping off the battery about 3 to 4 times per year.
My battery actually topped-off tonight, just as Mike has mentioned in several posts. My el-cheapo Radio Shack multimeter must be a little off calibration, because my pack made it to a maximum of 166.5 volts, then dropped off about 1.0 volt in the last two hours or so. I dropped the charge to 100 mA when I noticed the drop and kept it there for another hour, with no change in voltage.
It started out with a voltage reading of 151 and I *tried* to keep the variac adjusted with the current in the 150 to 200 mA range, but it took allot of baby sitting on my part to keep it there. Every hour or so, I would take a look and see that it had dropped to below 100 mA on numerous occasions.
I did not try the regulators that you and Mike have talked about, but maybe next time...
I think I may need to put a 1 ohm dropping resistor in series with the positive lead to the battery and monitor the voltage drop across it to determine the real mA current. I have three meters and each one gave a different reading, and not just by a difference of 5% either. Of course the resistor will need to be sized to properly dissipate the heat build-up and keep the resistance stable over temperature. But hopefully that will give me a better current reading than the meters I have when measuring current.
Jim.
