BatteryMINDer 2012: 12 Volt-2 Amp Battery Charger, Battery Maintainer, and Battery Desulfator - Designed for Cars, Trucks, Motorcycles, ATV, Boats, RV

I have a Corvette and live in snow country. That means putting the car away for the winter. Fortunately, I have a place to store the car. The down side is it isn't heated. Batteries will freeze if they are allowed to discharge. To prevent that, I need to either drive the Corvette regularly, bring the battery inside, or put it on a charger. I started my career in electronics designing battery charging systems for hand held devices. I found that the "Ideal" charger is complicated: different features are needed to quickly charge a battery versus maintain it over the winter. Until recently, you needed a different charger for quick recovery versus long term storage. While not the end-all product, this charger is a great, full featured device that incorporates more of the ideal charger features. Battery chargers come in many types: Bulk Chargers, trickle chargers, and smart chargers like BatteryMINDer. Bulk chargers are designed to quickly recover from a "dead" battery. They tend to have little sophistication, just pouring out lots of energy quickly. This is fine for bringing up a partially discharged battery and getting the car started quickly. But such brutes may overcharge the battery if left on for extended periods. And, they may not have temperature compensation. The bottom line, they may ruin a battery if left connected for extended periods - like the four months I need to store my car. Trickle chargers try to tackle the storage problem. Prior generations of these chargers just used a low-current charger with a maximum voltage output. These "weak" chargers simply don't have the power to quickly recharge a battery, but are reasonable at keeping one "full" under some conditions. They are cheap and somewhat effective. Neither of these "Dumb" chargers deal with significant details of maintaining a battery's charge. The voltage of a fully charged battery varies with temperature - about 12.5mv per degree. That doesn't sound like much, but over the 100 degree temperature variation that is possible with the car in storage, this is 1.25 volts - a significant voltage difference. If the charger's set point is too low, the battery will discharge; if too high, the battery will get too much energy and will over-heat. Such heat kills batteries by boiling off the water in the battery fluid. Battery manufactures publish the "ideal" charge profiles for their products. Here is a typical charge profile: [ Google "lead acid battery charge profile"] This charging profile has four phases: bulk charge, absorption charge, float charge, and testing. The "Smart Chargers" such as BatteryMINDer, solve these problem with with a micro-controller. They sense the state of charge in the battery, the outside temperature, and adjust charging accordingly. The BatteryMINDer provides all of the charge phases listed above, and adds two more: a Qualification phase and a desulfidization phase. - Qualification / Soft Start Phase - this is to test for a very dead battery - The charger is current limited, in this case to just 1/2 Amp. It uses this phase to check for reversed connection of the battery leads, damaged batteries, etc. For a salvagable battery, this phase slowly brings the battery up to a voltage level where it can be charged more quickly without generating excessive, damaging heat. - Bulk Charge/Fast Charge - Here the unit puts out maximum current. The BatteryMINDer puts out 2A. This is far less than typical Bulk Chargers (up to 25 A), but will recharge a typical car battery in about 12 hours. This slower rate makes this charger a poor choice for the quick-fix where you find that you had left your lights on overnight and are late for work. Massive bulk chargers are a better choice here, but are more stressful on the battery. - Float Charge - This mode is where the magic happens in these smart chargers. The Float Mode provides a temperature compensated trickle charge to the battery. It senses the ambient air temperature - or with a low cost accessory - the temperature at the battery - to adjust the trickle voltage and current to the environment. Unlike simple trickle chargers, this mode pulses current on/off to achieve a complete charge. The tender stays in this mode for about 15-60 minutes, depending upon the brand. - Battery Test - This mode turns off the charge entirely for a few minutes and then looks at the voltage over time. It is natural for the voltage to drop slightly. Excessively rapid drops indicate internal issues with the battery. The BatteryMINDer provides an LED indication for a damaged battery. For a normal battery, the rate of voltage drop is fed back into the Float Charge mode to adjust the on/off time of the current pulse to assure that the battery gets only the charge it needs. The combination of temperature controlled float and battery testing makes this the perfect system for long term storage. I ended up buying a cigarette adapter for the system - about $6 more. This saves me the hassle of popping the hood. I just plug the adapter into the cigarette lighter adapter and plug in the BatteryMINDer. (Note: This only works on cars where the accessory/lighter socket is ON when the car is off. GM cars work this way). I have reviewed the datasheets and found this the "Ideal" charger for me. (I still have a bulk/starter charger for the lights-left-on, gotta-get-to-work situation). I will know next spring how well this worked, but I am confident.

This is a simple to use unit, that seems to work well. I have used it for several weeks now. It is too early to say how long a battery maintained by this unit will last over one that is not maintained. Of course, if I didn't have a problem with such a battery in the first place, I wouldn't have gone to the expense of getting one. We have one automobile that is driven infrequently and for which I have replaced a battery once a year for the past four or five years. I used to keep a charger on that battery, but I suspect that I was contributing to the problem of building up lead sulfate crystals (sulfated battery) by doing so. So on the advice of a reputable shop, I switched to this battery minder. Though that shop did not recommend a specific model or manufacturer, they did emphasize getting a "good one." After reading reviews, I chose this model. So far, so good. I really liked the fact that the unit came with temperature sensors for charge and cycle regulation, though this auto in question is garaged and doesn't see extreme temperatures in this climate. But most of all, I liked the extra cables provided so that one could use the big alligator clamps or hard wire the connections to the battery with the additional provided cabling. I hard wired it to the battery and just leave the pigtail sticking out so that the unit can be reconnected after the car is used and disconnected before use quickly and conveniently. I am seriously considering getting another unit for my garden tractor/lawn mower. Update November 6, 2022: On October 20, 2022, I discovered that the BatteryMiNDer 2012 had failed. I usually glance at the unit every morning when I walk out to get the paper. On that morning, I noticed all lights on the unit were off. I checked the power cable and found that no matter what or where it was plugged, the power light would not come on, and that the unit was inop as measured with my volt-ohm meter. The unit had been in service in my garage protected from the weather since it was first put into service on August 15, 2022. The unit works very well and with that I am pleased. I have never attempted to start the car with the unit attached, btw, so that was not the cause of the failure of the original unit. The unit failed after about 2 months in service. I called the company on their 800 number, spoke to a man named "Dave," who said that there may have been a power surge (I doubt it as nothing in my home or garage else was affected). He issued a RMA number and instructed me to return the unit at my expense. Since I still had the original packaging, I repacked the unit with all the cables and accessories and took it to the Post Office on Oct 21 (USPS $12.50 to Huntington, NY). It was received at VDC Electronics on Oct 24th. I received notice that the unit was inop (Surprise! Surprise!) and would be replaced without charge. A brand new unit was shipped to me on Oct 26th from their NJ warehouse. I received it Friday evening Oct 28 at 7PM by UPS. I put it immediately into service once again, taking care again to save the original packaging just in case. All in all, great customer service. No complaints.

I bought this to replace the NOCO tender that died. I have several battery tenders but thought I'd upgrade to this one and so far it seems to be doing the job. I have it on my Harley. Very high end battery and I typically get 6-7 years out of them. Sometimes I can squeeze as much as 8 years. I have two of this model... both bikes are so far fully charged and ready to go.

I used to have several Battery Tender Jr devices that I used to maintain my tractor, motorcycle, scooter, power grader, and a couple other small equipment batteries. This worked, but required me to buy a device per battery and the power wasn't really enough to charge a battery that had been sitting a while if it was needed. Also, the jr's seemed to need to be replaced about every 8 years for something. I've had an LED stop working, wires break, and one just stop working. Not cheap to keep replacing them. I looked at some of the larger Battery Tender models as well as a bunch of alternatives. The BateryMinder brand seemed to have good reviews, seemed to last, and I liked the fact that they compensated for temperature as I use them in an unheated garage. I also liked the idea that they could maintain several batteries at once. At first, I was so paranoid about the AGM style batteries that I've been using, so I opted for the Battery Minder 12248 so I could select the battery type and more. The problem was that although this can charge fast and I can chain several batteries to it, I was never good at remembering to set the proper battery type. Come to find out, it really doesn't matter. After an entire winter season with 6 different batteries all running in "flooded" mode instead of AGM, they were fine. So, last year, I decided I wanted to mount another maintainer so that I didn't need to remove my motorcycle and scooter batteries, but rather just plug them in as needed. So, I purchased this simpler and cheaper model 2012. It is foolproof. I connected up a special SAE Y splitter to this maintainer and I would just park the bike, pull out the SAE pigtail and plug in. Long periods of rain, winter hibernation, whatever - the machines were always ready to go. No more needing to reset the clocks or anything. Simply unplug, tuck the pigtail away and RIDE! I wondered if the two different size batteries would be a problem (the scooter uses a much smaller battery than the motorcycle) but the system never complained. In October, the 12248 got damaged and rather than fussing with it, I replaced it with a 2012 as well. This time I mounted it out of the way and added a 5-way splitter with clips on a new shelf for the simple batteries and an extension to an SAE connector for the tractor. Everything is happy. I won't know for several years if this has any real issues, but my batteries last for many years since using maintainers - the one in my scooter is almost 9 years old and still works fine. The first one died in only 3 years, so I've already saved just in that battery the cost of the 2 model 2012 maintainers. I have no idea if the desulfator does any good as I've not really had a bad battery to test it. The battery for the power grader used to start to run slow after a grading session, but the last time I used it ran strong the entire time. Hard to tell if I just used it less or it was made stronger. In my book, it can't hurt. I was a little concerned about attaching multiple batteries to one charger, but once they are all in good shape that does not matter. It is only when I hook up a battery that really needs a good charge that I keep it connected alone. Once it's up to full, I hook up the rest again (basically overnight) The instructions recommend attaching a battery on its own to be sure it is good before adding it to a group. The instructions also recommend not mixing battery types, so all my batteries are now some form of AGM. I probably should have got the model 2012-AGM, but it was out of stock and I didn't see how it would matter. I like the fact that the LEDs are easy to get a status at a glance. I have the devices mounted high and in clear view so that every time I pass through the garage, I can simply glance at the device and tell everything is in good shape. Every so often, I manage to catch the device in 'test' mode which always has me take a closer look to see what is going on. The pattern is different enough to catch your attention. With small equipment batteries running nearly $200 a pop in some cases, these devices are cheap insurance for long life.

I studied the specifications of many battery chargers and reviewed their customer feedback on amazon.com before I chose the BatteryMINDer 2012 charger. Positives : - Temperature compensated charging to prevent over- and undercharging by using a temperature sensor - Shows actual state of charging (soft start, constant current, constant voltage, float) - High frequency charging pulses (instead of regular current charging) to reduce battery sulphation - Can be connected to any AC power source between 110 and 240 V - Long charging cables to locate battery charger away from battery The BatteryMINDer 2012 has lights to indicate a weak battery or bad cell which are activated depending on the battery voltage at the end of a 10 min. battery test (battery at rest). This battery test is first done at the completion of the constant voltage charging stage, and then every 12 hours while in float stage. My experience is that this battery test will NOT detect a battery that has been charged and passed the battery test, but then fails to start the engine the next time, i.e. that fails to hold charge. I am guessing that a longer battery test (at least one hour) might catch batteries that charge up okay, but fail to hold charge. Other battery smart chargers (e.g. CTEK) also have very short test periods, so will probably not catch such batteries either. The other minor disadvantage is that the BatteryMINDer 2012 has a maximum current of only 2 amps, so charging a battery that is significantly discharged will take some time.

Bought for my 2026 Polaris Ranger. You can plug this into your dash instead of pulling your seats. So much easier. Works great. Desulfates as it charges.

Good so far, has all the accessories you’d need to get this on a motorcycle.

I recently bought an Indian Scout and they recommend this battery tender since it has a Desulfunazation (correct spelling?) feature. It's much more than just a standard trickle charger though and tells you the health of your battery and will even adjust amps going into the battery based on the health (I've also used this on my 99 Shadow which was given the 3/4 on battery health since it's sat for a few months). It comes with 3 different connection types so if you have a built in charge port on your bike, it's very easy to hook up. When you plug it in, it'll tell you if the leads are hooked up correctly (if manually hooking up the wires) and it will desulfanate your battery and then do a "test" mode; the test mode puts no current into your battery for 10 minutes and will test the battery's resting voltage, then it will rate your battery based on that and charge at what it deems is the appropriate voltage and current. Once it's up to charge, it'll stay in the desulfanate mode. TLDR is you plug this thing in, forget about it and it does all the work for you. The only small issue I had was once it charges your battery to what it deems is "full" it just stays in the desulfanization phase and there's no light that tells you the battery is "fully charged." Honestly a very small gripe. I don't regret buying this at all. I'll probably even use it on my truck when I don't drive it for more than a month at a time.

It was as described.

Excelente producto te marca el estado actual de la batería se instala fácilmente compatible con cualquier motocicleta.

This unit was recommended by Polaris for my RZR. Connections fit perfect. In no time my battery was at full strength. Great little unit. The unit shows status of the battery and what stages. The LED's are a great thing to high lite the status of your battery.

Currently there are only two manufacturers that I am aware of that use a seven step charging phase to bring batteries back to life. Batteryminder is one of them and the key is their desulfation phase. Sulfation is the number one cause of death for automotive batteries. I own and use two model types. The 2012 and the 2012 AGM (for AGM batteries). I just brought my brothers original Mopar battery back to life (7years old with 450,000 km on it). Use the 2012 AGM to maintain my 6 yr old Arctic Cat ATV and the two AGM batteries in my diesel truck. These chargers are a great piece of technology. Hope to extend the life of these batteries well beyond 10 years. This charger could cut battery sales in half. OOPPPPS!

My ride on mower battery wouldn’t hold charge, I was about to recycle it. After using this charger, it is now working fine. I also fixed several other dead batteries with this charger.