Pandora charging issues


M

mikeb

Still Fresh
Joined
May 13, 2011
Messages
10
Hi all,


had my Pandora for a while now and it has started being a problem to charge the battery.


Plug in the Pandora to AC (or USB) and the charging LED does not light up (nor does the battery charge). Put the Pandora into "sleep" mode and after a few seconds, the red charging light comes on and then after 2 seconds, goes out again.


Again, the battery does not charge.


I tried rebooting, resitting the battery, booting plugged into AC (& USB), booting without being plugged in, I reflashed the firmware, I tried putting it into sleep mode immediately as it boots (before battery icon appears in XFE), I tried leaving it on AC (& USB) and combinations of these actions.


Eventually, I got lucky and the battery charged without problem. This was after resitting the battery AGAIN, with a small piece of cardboard between the battery cover & battery, to really press in the battery.


Yeah I thought, just a loose battery.


But no, it seems like I just got lucky. Because after use (and not having moved the battery) I get the same problem again.


Another thing I noticed, was that I shut down the Pandora, as I was not planning to use it for a couple of days. It shut down fine and all LEDs were dark. But a couple of hours later, I noticed the green LED was dim, indicating it was in sleep mode. Sure enough it had powered itself up and later gone into sleep mode. So I did a shut down again, it shut down fine and all LEDs were dark. But once again a couple of hours later, I noticed the green LED was dim and sure enough again it had powered itself up and later gone into sleep mode.


I am thinking that there is a bad connection somewhere, preventing it from charging and making the unit think the battery was inserted.


On the other hand, when the battery is charged, the unit works perfectly and I can play with it for hours, with no problems at all.


So what do you think ?


Faulty battery (I already had one faulty battery and had to get it replaced) ?


Faulty Pandora ?


Some strange SW issue ?


All opinions & feedback welcome,


Thanks,


/Mike B.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
This old thread http://boards.openpa...rk/page__st__20 was brought back up again last week (new details and partial fix) and it has quite a few people with their Pandorae turning themselves on at random and weird charging behaviour.


Yours is the first time lately that this has mentioned though
sad.gif
I hope someone can figure it out for you.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I can describe what happened to me. I let my Pandora battery go to 0%. When I powered the Pandora via power cable, the Pandora switched to using the Battery and did not use the external power. At which point the Pandora shut down again, low Battery. The Pandora then powered up again because the power cable was still connected. Eventually, the Battery got charged enough to keep the Pandora from shutting down and then kept charging. I don't understand why during the boot sequence of the Pandora it switches from external power to the Battery. If it had ran off the external power full time while it was plugged in, it wouldn't have had that issue.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
This sounds like the charger just isn't supplying enough power to the Pandora. On USB, in Windows, this is not entirely unexpected as Windows drops the power on USB to only 100ma unless a driver asks for it (which is technically correct. Linux actually does the wrong thing, officially, by providing the full 500ma). You can force it to go full power by switching an SD card into mass storage mode. Put the Pandora into mass storage mode and then plug in the USB, see if it starts charging. If it does, excellent, if not, big problem.


That wouldn't explain why the AC adapter would have trouble though, unless you were unlucky enough to get a bad one.


Try removing the battery and plugging in the AC, try to run it without the battery. DO NOT PUT THE BATTERY IN WHILE IT IS PLUGGED IN! Be sure to unplug it before putting the battery back!


If you can run off AC without battery, then there probably isn't anything wrong with the adapter and I'll have to think about it some more.
 
WizardStan said:
This sounds like the charger just isn't supplying enough power to the Pandora. On USB, in Windows, this is not entirely unexpected as Windows drops the power on USB to only 100ma unless a driver asks for it (which is technically correct. Linux actually does the wrong thing, officially, by providing the full 500ma). You can force it to go full power by switching an SD card into mass storage mode. Put the Pandora into mass storage mode and then plug in the USB, see if it starts charging. If it does, excellent, if not, big problem.


That wouldn't explain why the AC adapter would have trouble though, unless you were unlucky enough to get a bad one.


Try removing the battery and plugging in the AC, try to run it without the battery. DO NOT PUT THE BATTERY IN WHILE IT IS PLUGGED IN! Be sure to unplug it before putting the battery back!


If you can run off AC without battery, then there probably isn't anything wrong with the adapter and I'll have to think about it some more.
Click to expand...

Hi WizardStan,


thanks for taking the time to respond.


I took your advice, put the SD card into mass storage mode and connected it to my PC. Sure enough, I can browse the SD card from my PC, but the Pandora does not charge :-(.


I also powered down the Pandora, removed the battery and connected it to the AC. The unit powered up and worked fine. I powered it down again, replaced the battery and powered it up. It does not charge while on the AC :-(.


I should point out, the Pandora has charged the battery in the past (battery is still ~53% charged).


So what ever has happened, has happened recently :-(.


At this stage I am at a total loss. I have reflashed the firmware (in case of a SW problem).


Tried via AC.


Tried via USB.


Tried reseating the battery.


Most maddening of all, sometimes the red charging LED will come on for a very short period, then go out again :-(.


Any idea of how to proceed ? New battery ? Send in unit for repair ? Something else I can try first ?


Thanks,


/Mike B.
 
Hi all,


I can also add, if I boot up the Pandora and then plug in the AC. After about 10 to 15 seconds, the red charging LED lights up for about 1 to 2 seconds and then goes out again.


So somehow the circuitry seems to be intact (or ?).


Is the battery toast ?


Note: I got a bad battery with the Pandora (since replaced with this one). I should also note, that this battery worked fine for a while and only now is refusing to charge.


Could I be so unlucky as to have gotten two bad batteries ?


Or is that too much of a coincidence and the Pandora unit itself is faulty and some how ruining the battery ?


Thanks,


/Mike B.
 
Weird. Not a problem I remember hearing about. Sorry, I've got no solution :(


Might be best to contact your seller and ask about an RMA.
 
I would hate to spread false hope, but...


Against clear advice I used a a Nokia car charger ( it worked with my Nokia N800 tablet) to charge the Pandora, and two days later, after letting the battery become completely drained, I could not charge it again. So I thought I damaged the internal charging circuit.


I was trying to find courage to send my Pandora back for repair, when I remembered that it MUST be on to charge. So I charged the battery with a LiPo charger. When it reached 3.3V, it was able to turn the Pandora on again, and I finished charging it with Pandoras' charger. At first the red led blinked every two seconds or so, but as the battery's charge increased it stopped to blink.
 
If the battery becomes completely drained the charge chip will enter an emergency pre-charge mode where it redirects all power to the battery until it becomes charged enough to power on. This can apparently take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour, during which time your Pandora will appear to be dead.
 
WizardStan said:
If the battery becomes completely drained the charge chip will enter an emergency pre-charge mode where it redirects all power to the battery until it becomes charged enough to power on. This can apparently take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour, during which time your Pandora will appear to be dead.
Click to expand...

By my experience it can take a whole night, and still appear to be dead. :p
 
Hello everybody

I just received my 1Ghz edition today and I am struggling to charge it. Note that I am charging the unit with the official sector adaptor (not usb).

I encounter exactly the same issues as described above.

The red lid does not turn on, while the battery monitor claim the unit is charging from AC.

When the unit goes into "slow mode", charging seems to stop... Indeed, when it wakes up, the battery monitor claim it is not connected anymore to the AC.

I will try with the second battery tonight... I hope this is only an issue with the first battery.

Regards

François
 
There is a new firmware coming up tonight (or tomorrow) which should fix the charging LED :)
 
Hello

Well, at last I get through the charging process. It was quite painfull :)

So, i will go through a complete charging/discharging process, hoping that the next charging will be more fluid...

But this is very annoying that the charging process stops when the unit goes into "slow mode"

Is there something to configure to avoid this?

Thanks for your help

francois
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The pandora shouldn't automatically go into any sort of sleep mode, if mine is at all representative. The screen will blank after a while if you leave it with the lid open, but everything's still up and running apart from the LCD.


FWIW, last time I charged mine up the charge light failed to come on, and when I took it off charge it didn't stop saying 'on AC' until I used it for a bit and put it into low-power mode. But I used the excellent Pandora System Info tool to confirm it was receiving a net positive of charge before leaving it to charge.
 
Hello

A quick update: the second charging cycle went much more smoothly.

Probably that the first time, the battery was too low (0%) and this make things difficult.

Regards

François
 
I also have charge problems often.
Yesterday I found out that it might be a problem of corrrosion or dirt in the power connector of the Pandora. Turning the plug inside the connector a few times suddenly started the charge process, after it was not started for quite a while after plugging / unplugging the connector.
I will need to make more tests in the next couple of days and clean the connectors to see if things get better then.
But for anyone having problems to start charging when connecting power, turning the plug inside the connector may be worth a try.
Btw: Charging via USB works flawlessly most of the times for me. One more jint that it could just be a connection problem with the power connector.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

J
Stop Battery Drainage During Standby Mode?
Replies
5
Views
2K
Miner49er
Miner49er
I
Charging issues
Replies
3
Views
1K
igboo
I
J
Battery drain post Hotfix 5
Replies
14
Views
3K
cosurgi
cosurgi
C
Red charging led not working after battery was depleted
Replies
14
Views
2K
urjaman
urjaman
Barnaby
Is my battery in need of replacement?
2
Replies
28
Views
4K
Barnaby
Barnaby
Back
Top