Intelligent Chargers
An intelligent charger isn’t going to play chess with you or anything, but what it does do is monitor the battery’s voltage, temperature, and/or time under the charge. The charger then adjusts the output current to give the optimum charge. For Ni-Cad and NiMH batteries, the chargers slowly increase the voltage during the charging process then it will decrease the voltage when it has determined that the battery is fully charged. Such chargers are often labeled as a AV, or “delta-V,” charger, indicating that they monitor the voltage change and are self-adjustable.