wrote:
Stubby wrote:
: I've always wondered why equipment manufacturers don't put a full wave
: bridge (4 diodes) in the battery circuit so it doesn't matter how you
: insert the batteries (or the polarity of a charger brick).

Voltage drop. Even low-voltage schottky diodes will drop 0.3-0.4V. That's
like throwing away 33% of your 1.2v battery capacity.

Measuring battery capacity in volts is pretty meaningless. Amp hours are us.

More significantly the device in question runs on 12 volts.

On the other side of the ledger a bridge would have two diodes in series giving
a total drop of 0.6-1.2 volts. This would give a considerable loss of transmit
power but only dissipate 5-10% of the battery capacity as heat.

cheers
Mark
Piled higher and Deeper.