Charging woes

[Eight Bit]

This morning when I wanted to charge my Pandora up, the charging light did not come on when inserting the barrel jack. I reinserted it a couple of times but it didn't help so I rebooted the machine. After it rebooted I inserted the charger and the red light came on for a brief moment and switched back off again. I tried re-inserting it a couple of times again and just when I was about to give up the charging light began to blink. It switched off again and a couple seconds later it started blinking again and then it kept on charging.
I took the charger out, re-inserted it and it started charging straight away like nothing was ever wrong.
My battery was at 45% the whole time. Does any one have an idea what could have been wrong here?

 

[kuru]

Same for me. Fiddling with the plug shows the barrel jack connection is dodgy. The only reliable way of charging is via mini USB. Haven't looked at resoldering yet.

 

[TrashyMG]

My Pandora seem particularly picky on the barrel jack of the charger I use. I have one that needs to be rotated at the right position to work properly where another charger jack seems to work just fine.

 

[Swordfish II]

I just always use the mini usb since i always have a usb plug handy. I know that doesn't help you though

 

[TeDaDeS]

I didn't have this problem.

When charging this way I does happen that the Pandora stops at ~75% while USB charging doesn't appear to stop there.
If this happens I just plug it in again and it resumes charging.
Good thing the Pandora last a few hours without seeing a charger.

 

[levi]

You can configure when the Pandora starts and stops charging, I forget when that happened; maybe something late 1.2x or early 1.3x. But it shouldn't discriminate between usb and barrel jack charging, so I've no real idea what's going on there.

 

[Eight Bit]

Yeah, I charge it twice a week at most. I love the Pandora's stamina
This wasnt the first time some weird stuff happens. It's not the charger for sure, I've been using this PSP charger for my Pandora for over 8 years already.
I didn't think it was a hardware issue like a bad solder joint either but who knows... I'll keep an eye on it.
I was thinking maybe it had something to do with the charging chip if that's at all possible.

 

[levi]

The charging chip is liable to get confused, especially if confused by the Pandora's slack connection of the battery to the PCB is in effect. But my experience of it suggests it hasn't a lot of memory; if you fix the connection it's back to work again pretty quickly (within a charge cycle at the very least).

 

[Eight Bit]

Well, it's still giving me a hard time. When I plugged in the mini-USB, the red charging light came on very brief but switched off straight after.
I then switched off my Pandora and inserted the barrel jack. This powered up my Pandora again like it's supposed to but the charging light did not come on. After the booting process, System info showed that the battery WAS indeed charging (at <400mA) but the light was off. I then re-inserted the jack again, charging stopped and did not come back on.
After 10 minutes switching between jack and USB and watching the red light blink for a few seconds before switching off again I wanted to give up so I left the Pandora sitting there with the barrel jack connected.
5 minutes later I came back, the Pandora was still not charging, I then took out the jack, re-inserted it, the red light started flashing and behold, after about 10 flashes the red light stayed on.
I kept the jack in, it's charging now but I did try messing with the jack and the cables, to see if there's a bad solder joint or cable or something but nothing seems wrong...

I'm afraid my charging chip is reaching its EOL? Or is there maybe some capacitor that needs to fill up before the charging chip can take charging over?

 

[TrashyMG]

Try taking the battery out for 5-10 minutes and then try charging. It gives enough time for the charging circuit to reset it's information as there is a capacitor that keeps that circuit running for a while even without a battery in.

 

[b_o_b]

You might also try charging with ac + usb at the same time. For whatever reason that seems to be necessary (sometimes) to charge one of my pandora's (ac or usb only stops charging after a while and keeps discharging until battery is flat)

 

[Eight Bit]

Trashy's suggestion worked for me. My Pandora charges normally again. Thanks all!
It seems I'm up to 581 charge cycles now, but it's my 2nd battery which is at 90% of it's initial capacity. My old battery was all puffed up and broke my black battery lid