Battery not charging...

[don.fief]

I ran the battery pretty low last night, (reading the forum in bed), %19. Today it was plugged in all day and didn't get past %20. I powered it off, and back on again, let it sit for about 5 hours, same thing. Powered it off and off again, killed extra tasks with ATK, and now it seems to be charging. Anybody else see this?

Don

 

[pingween]

I have the similar experience. When the tablet is switched off, it will not charge. It must be running on to be charging.
What tasks did you kill?

 

[Eddy123]

I ran the battery pretty low last night, (reading the forum in bed), %19. Today it was plugged in all day and didn't get past %20. I powered it off, and back on again, let it sit for about 5 hours, same thing. Powered it off and off again, killed extra tasks with ATK, and now it seems to be charging. Anybody else see this?

Don

according to our experience:
1, battery broken
2, charge IC broken( fixed on board)

 

[don.fief]

The tablet WAS off when I was trying to charge it. That probably was the issue. As for the tasks I killed, there were a couple of games my kids had left running, and gmail.

The battery is at %95 today. Kind of wierd it won't charge while off. Also, doesn't update the battery status while in standby. Bring it out of standby and it looks like the battery is charging fast until the widget catches up to the actual charge... i.e. %2 increase every 5 seconds or so.

Don

 

[jplatt11]

according to our experience:
1, battery broken
2, charge IC broken( fixed on board)

I seem to be having the problem with the battery not charging either.

I'm doing some investigating into the problem. First off the power connector got damaged when I accidentally pick up the unit while it was plugged in, which made the connection intermittent. If I held it just right the battery light came on. So I took the unit appart and fixed the connection on the board. But then a few day later it stopped charging correctly, even though the charge light was on. So I took the unit apart again, and checked the voltage at the connector (with the unit on and charging it was only 7.2 Volts.) I think this may be too low to use and charge the unit at the same time.

To make a long story short the crappy wallwart that came with the unit is junk probably so I'm ordering one of these. 6.5V,8.4V,9V,12V,15V AC-DC 3A 40W POWER SUPPLY CHARGER

on ebay. either the 8.4 or 9V setting should work, it probably doesnt have the right connector though, you may have to butcher the crappy charger that cam with the unit.

But there are still several possibilities here

1. not enough voltage/current from the wallwart.
2. Bad connection at the DC connector on the unit.
3. Bad charging IC on the board.
4. Bad cell in the battery pack (this may be the case since the unit was shutting down with 40% battery charge. I can't confirm this though since the unit went back to 100 charge finally)

What I'm going to do it is.

mod the unit with a more robust Power connector.
use a better ac charger.
Possibly replace the Li cells if they are bad

My plans are to use the unit as a car GPS/nav/web device tethered to my Droid.
So I'm getting a good car charging unit, and if all else fails I'm going to forget the battery and just hard wire the unit to the car battery..... hmmm. anyone tried this yet....

Sorry long first post I'll try to keep it shorter next time.

will update when I get this worked out.

 

[jplatt11]

Update:

My problem with charging seems to have been the power connector(s). I changed the connector to a larger type plug and rerouted it to the other side of the Pad. I had to do some major mods to the case, by melting it with the soldering iron, but now I have 9 Volts exactly with charging, with the screen on. So it might not be the AC Wallwart itself, but the connection to to he unit. Before I did this mod, the charge LED would come on, and then go off after a minute. and It wouldn't charge pas 60% most of the time.

The other mod I did while i had it appart was to put a three small holes in black part of the screen just above the microphone, I'm hoping this will fix the muffled sound that the mic seems to have. Now I want to try out SIPDroid with this unit with the audio hooked up to my car speakers. hands free calling in the car! he he.