A NiCad battery needs to be fully discharged before you can charge it again to prevent permanent damage to the battery.
You can make a battery discharger with a resistor, analogue/digital voltmeter (do NOT try ammeter), or an LED connected in series with a resistor to see how much power is left in the discharger. However, when the rechargeable battery voltage falls before below 2 V during discharging, the LED turns OFF and thus stops the discharging of the battery. A resistor will need to be connected in parallel with the voltmeter if the voltmeter input resistance is above 10 kohms. Most digital voltmeters would have an input resistance of at least 1 Megohm.
I made the following circuit by connecting a 1.5 V battery to 1.5 V light bulb:
After a few hours, I saw the light in the bulb completely turning OFF and thus fully discharging the battery.
I thought of this idea after reading this article (that shows a cheaper solution to the same problem):
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