alt Hacker NewsDesigners have a choice in lithium-ion though. 18650 is is pretty large cell but there's 14500 which is AA sized or 10440 which is AAA sized. They make versions with the usual battery "nub" rather than the flat faces for spot welding, and built-in protection circuitry to prevent over-discharging. You probably would want to use ones of a different size than normal 1.5v cells though. A personal favorite of mine is RCR123A/16340.
Even many of the pouch cells come in "standard"-ish sizes. An 803860 is nominally 8.0mm x 38mm x 60mm, but I am seeing more custom sizes recently.
Meanwhile, alkaline batteries can go to hell. You might as well plan on one leaking in the battery compartment. My favorite non-rechargable 1.5V AAs are Li-FeS2, which never leak and have spectacularly low self discharge (especially good for multi-year ultra-low-power projects), but are dammed expensive.
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>Meanwhile, alkaline batteries can go to hell. You might as well plan on one leaking in the battery compartment.
On the other hand, alkaline batteries never burn your house down.
I also feel like they serve different purposes. Needed for long-term storage and only used in an emergency? (eg, a flashlight for power outages) You're probably better off going with old-fashioned alkaline batteries. Duracell claims they're good for 10 years. Needed for day-to-day usage? Lithium might be better: you can monitor for swelling, the battery recharge-ability is probably more important than any of the downsides that come with lithium ion batteries.
I’m visiting some family and I’m a hero for fixing a couple devices that stopped working from alkaline batteries by using a bit of foil paper to overcome the corroded contacts.
Maybe not great in the long run (steel and aluminum don’t like eachother)… maybe I should have put on some grease…
> My favorite non-rechargable AAs are Li-FeS2
Lithium Iron Disulfide. For those looking for a brand name, that's what these are:
https://energizer.com/batteries/energizer-ultimate-lithium-b...