Battery Issues? Short Circuit?

[XENON]

I have a 6G Combo+ Slim, purchased last year, that... worked well for a few months, and then unfortunately stopped functioning. It would get caught in a boot cycle issue, both when running off the internal battery and plugged in via USB. 

So it sat for months as I was tied up with work. I finally got a bit of time to investigate the other day, and taking out the internal battery it functions perfectly with said battery removed, just plugged in over USB. 

To add to the confusion, in at least one test after that, when plugging the battery in with the case largely removed/dis-assembled, it worked fine with the battery again. However when hooking the battery in and reassembling it, it went back to the prior behavior. 

I noted that if I held/pressed the power switch during boot it would make it through boot, but once I removed my hand or jostled it, it would immediately boot cycle again. Making me suspect a possible issue with the power switch rather than the battery.

That said, the battery leads/molex dont look particularly splendid, and the battery itself is labeled "2007" which I sincerely hope is not the date of manufacture for a battery in a hardware device purchased in 2021......  Full battery label: UTG PL103450 3.7V  + 1800mAh  6.66Wh 2007

This unit was purchased through SeeeedStudio. 

Any insight on underlying cause, or similar experiences and solves would be greatly appreciated. Originally I figured simply replacing the battery might be enough, but now Im not so sure. And the only place Ive found the battery listed is Aliexpress. Is it possible to purchase this from Seeed or RF Explorer directly? I cant seem to find it on their sites.

Thanks! 

[RF Explorer]

Hi,

Sorry to hear you are having difficulties with the battery. Unfortunately, due to shipment restrictions and prohibitive cost, SeeedStudio cannot ship batteries alone anymore.

We did not have this problem reported before, so we do not know for sure what the root cause may be. Perhaps the battery connector or the battery cable is somehow short circuiting in a specific position, so with the correct isolation may be resolved.

If you can share some detailed pictures of the battery assembled / disassembled we can help better either here or if you open a ticket at support.rf-explorer.com

 Regards,

RF Explorer Team

[Rodrigo Hernandes]

I had a problem more or less similar to this one, the equipment would not boot, but it allowed updating, it was a slightly bad battery problem, but it was precisely at the time that the covid appeared. which stopped me from buying a new battery. I informed that there was something wrong with the firmware in the battery calibration. It was in the drawer for a long time. Until out of nowhere I saw a new update Ver. "1.32" that resurrected the equipment. then I updated to version 1.33 and it worked normally. It is still running on the same battery. your model is much newer than mine, but I don't know if the firmware is the same ... if it is, see if you have the latest version. See if it's something similar to the problem in this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orGMA766JZQ 

[Donald Viszneki]

> Perhaps the battery connector or the battery cable is somehow short circuiting in a specific position

Check the battery voltage. If it has a charge, then this hypothesis cannot be correct. Right?

If it turns out to be the case, I wouldn't be surprised if the battery charging circuitry has been damaged by it.

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[XENON]

Thanks for the good suggestions all. I wound up ordering a new battery from Amazon. Which is working perfectly. I unfortunately could not find the exact model other than Aliexpress, which I didnt want to deal with, so the replacement model is slightly more than half the rated mAh of the prior one.... but was not manufactured in 2007. How a battery from 2007 wound up in a device sold as new in 2021 is something I'd love an explanation for. 

I also wound up updating the firmware.... and it appears the NutsaboutNets software (both Touchstone Pro on MacOS and Rational Waves on Windows) do not currently work with the latest firmware for my unit, 3.29.... so I guess the next step is contacting them. 

[XENON]

trying to attach images.... 

[XENON]

Well, the good news is I was able to get Touchstone Pro working with the unit again on 3.29 firmware, after disabling gatekeeper (for the millionth time... it keeps re-enabling itself... ) reinstalling the latest drivers from silabs, poking around with unloading and re-loading the kext, and relaunching the app a few times. 

Hopefully this helps anyone that comes across this.

On Monday, January 31, 2022 at 12:55:03 PM UTC-5 XENON wrote:

trying to attach images.... 

[Donald Viszneki]

I just had to do this myself for an unrelated product. It's surprising to me that there isn't enough of a market for these kinds of batteries in the US that they aren't warehoused here. (I wasn't able to find the battery I needed except in China.)

> How a battery from 2007 wound up in a device sold as new in 2021 is something I'd love an explanation for

I suspect that the RF Explorer manufacturer invested in all the current stock years ago. It is not a mass market product, but maybe in the future they should save battery procurement and installation for a later date. I also had some kind of battery problem with the RF Explorer 6G Combo Plus and I suspect it was for the same reason, though I had just bought it, so I just returned it so I didn't void the warranty opening it up to diagnose the problem.

On Mon, Jan 31, 2022 at 9:55 AM XENON <david.m...@gmail.com> wrote:

trying to attach images.... 

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[Kean Maizels]

It is very unlikely that the battery was manufactured in 2007. The date codes on lots of electronic components are in YYWW format, so "2007" as a manufacture date would be 7th week of 2020.

I have an original model RF Explorer that I purchased from Seeed way back in May 2013.  The manufacturing date on the battery is 2012-10-30, and it still works (not that I use it much).

[RF Explorer]

Hi,

Unfortunately the international shipment regulation has been increasing restrictions over the years, from about 3 years is now impossible to ship Lithium batteries alone anymore. 

We cannot ship batteries from China factory except if embedded inside the device, which is subject to a different restriction. That is the same reason why nowadays you can get any cell phone in shops but no longer replacement batteries, it is a global problem.

You can get equivalent batteries from Aliexpress and other sources like that, because they do not comply shipment requirements. If they correctly mark the product as including a Lithium battery standalone, it won't be accepted for shipment. They just don't care and ship it without declaring that, but it is of course risky and our Distributors cannot do that.

Regards,

RF Explorer Team

[RF Explorer]

Hi,

That is correct, marking follow that date coding. All our RF Explorer products are manufactured with fresh batteries, and delivered with 50% charge to maximize long term battery life.

Regards,

RF Explorer Team