[SOLVED] Pandora Lost Charge Overnight

[Eniko]

Okay, I'm not sure if I should be worried about this or not. Last night I charged my Pandora to 99%, then shut it down via the OS after unplugging it from the charger. Or at least I'm pretty sure that's how I did it. I just grabbed my Pandora, and switched it on. It showed the Pandora logo and then the xfce boot screen, then all went dark. Tried booting it again, same thing.

Plugged it into the charger, same thing. This time I got the bright idea of trying to up the gamma and hey look, I have a screen again! But my red charging light is blinking angrily and the OS reported 0% on the battery. It's charging now and up to 4%.

Does this mean my battery might be defective? Mind you when I got it and plugged it into the charger it wasn't completely empty so...

 

[mali]

Here is a quote from MWeston on the matter:

i took my battery out overnight and when i put it back into my pandora it wouldnt turn on. i plugged in the charger and nothing.
i unplugged and replugged the charger 10 or so times and finally it booted up.

The battery was so discharged that it was too low to turn the system on. Leaving it plugged in and plugging it in and out 10 times just cumulatively added up to enough charge time to exceed the 3.2V threshold the PMIC needs to leave the pre-charge state.

it's now sitting with the charger plugged in and i watched the charge go from 0 to 1%.

This confirms it here which is nice. Being at 0% means you are just out of the pre-charge area.

looks like my battery may be duff?

Let's find out. In some experiments with other projects, I have learned one way to recognize a dead/dying battery. I assume this is accurate as cells shouldn't do this normally. Please try this procedure if you don't mind:
- Charge battery to 100% if you can get it there. Record that maximum percentage you were able to get to if not 100 but get there if possible.
- Shut down and remove battery. If you have a voltmeter, measure the battery's voltage and record it to tell me. The voltage is across the two outer pads on the battery pack as labeled.
- Leave the battery sit at standard room temperature (20-25C, not too humid an environment, etc.) for a 24 hour period. Stick it in the battery box or something so that it is safe and out of the way.
- Run your unit on AC only if that works for your board (being experimental and a 'test' feature as I've mentioned before, it still doesn't work on absolutely all boards for some reason). This way you can still enjoy playing around for that day rather than being Pandora-less unless you are too busy anyway.
- At the end of the 24 hour period, measure the battery voltage with the voltmeter if you have one. Let me know the new voltage. If you don't have a voltmeter, you will have to stick it back in and boot up. Let me know the new percentage. A few percent would be tolerable as cell voltage relaxes after charging completes. Tens of percentage drop would indicate the cell is toast and you should contact OP sales for a new one. A 48 hour period would be even better because it will likely keep dropping and I forget how long I set my intervals when testing some batteries I turned into balloons but it was in the 24-48 hour range. I think one day should give us the data we need.

Are you still on your first battery? I don't think you have a replacement already right?

Thanks.

 

[Eniko]

I'll get on that, then.

... Sure hope the AC only option works for me.

 

[emcp]

These in consistency are starting to worry me

Fair enough the case could be inconsistent, but the boards and the function of what your pandora can or cant do. errrrrrrrr................

it still doesn't work on absolutely all boards for some reason

 

[God Ginrai]

These in consistency are starting to worry me

Fair enough the case could be inconsistent, but the boards and the function of what your pandora can or cant do. errrrrrrrr................

it still doesn't work on absolutely all boards for some reason

Running the Pandora without a battery has been stated time and time again as a TEST FEATURE. It is not a guaranteed feature, and you should not expect to be able to do it any more than you should expect the ability to overclock to 1 GHz.

-God Ginrai

 

[verm71]

That's odd. I can understand maximum CPU clock speeds varying highly from one unit to the other due to the resistance, heat dissipation and other events that vary greatly at the microscopic level. But being able to run without a battery? My neophyte mind thinks the current from the power adapter through the Pandora's power jack either successfully routes power to the board, or it doesn't. What could possibly be the variant from one board to another that would allow some, but not all boards to power up off AC without a battery?

 

[tsh]

My neophyte mind thinks the current from the power adapter through the Pandora's power jack either successfully routes power to the board, or it doesn't.

You're forgetting the power management chip, which sits between charger, battery and the rest of the board. This has ultimate control of when the CPU is allowed to run, and may have modes of operation that are dependent on specific currents or voltages - particularly if they are not designed for production use.

 

[MWeston]

Okay, I'm not sure if I should be worried about this or not. Last night I charged my Pandora to 99%, then shut it down via the OS after unplugging it from the charger. Or at least I'm pretty sure that's how I did it.

Is there a chance that you were removing the charger during the shutdown procedure? If so, it will shut down like normal and even though the charger is removed, it might still think it needs to restart because it caught that "charger still plugged in" event before going down. Then it would have sat on all night until reaching the shutdown point.

If not, you may have a bad battery and might want to consider my test that has been quoted a couple of times.

My neophyte mind thinks the current from the power adapter through the Pandora's power jack either successfully routes power to the board, or it doesn't. What could possibly be the variant from one board to another that would allow some, but not all boards to power up off AC without a battery?

You can't just route a charger input straight to the battery. It goes through the PMIC and gets tested for a number of conditions first. Since it is a test mode, there may be variances in the silicon's analog section that still passes spec tests, but doesn't work for this mode. They only care that it charges the battery which is the main purpose of the charge path.

 

[Pleng]

Did you check the shutdown completed properly? Sometimes my unit hangs when shutting down and a reset is needed.

 

[Prometheus]

Mine does what Pleng's does, occasionally, too - I never shut the lid until I'm sure it's gone off properly, myself (that's an old habit, though, which dates back to some past laptops of mine ).

 

[mali]

^ My Aspire One with Linpus did that, too. How annoying it was.

 

[WizardStan]

off topic anecdote: I met up with a friend a few weeks ago who wanted to show me something on his laptop. He turned it on, only to be met with the "shutting down" screen. He had closed the lid on his laptop before it had finished shutting down, prompting it to go to sleep WHILE it was shutting down. When he turned it back on, it simply woke up and finished the shut down procedure. It was hilarious.

 

[Pleng]

haha yea I've had that before. Us Windows users are used to dodget shutdown procedures

 

[Prometheus]

It could be worse, though - the earliest revision of the Apple MacBook (2006, wasn't it?) had an issue (later fixed in a firmware update) where the shutdown procedure appeared to complete, but actually did not - you could open the machine a while later to find the thing overheating like crazy and the LCD taking on weird blue tones from all the heat!

I think that one beats all other shutdown problems *anywhere*.

But that's off-topic, so I'll shut up now. :lol:

 

[Eniko]

Is there a chance that you were removing the charger during the shutdown procedure? If so, it will shut down like normal and even though the charger is removed, it might still think it needs to restart because it caught that "charger still plugged in" event before going down. Then it would have sat on all night until reaching the shutdown point.

If not, you may have a bad battery and might want to consider my test that has been quoted a couple of times.

That sounds like it might've been what happened. Either way I'm doing the test now, just in case.

 

[HackModford]

I think mine actually lost it's charge last night. I was sure I shut it down before going to bed... I've just been charging it at night... this night I'm going to experiment...

 

[Eniko]

Just tested my battery after about 36 hours and it's still at 100%. So folks; make sure to unplug your charger before initiating shutdown or you might wake up to an empty battery!

 

[HackModford]

I ran my pandora down to %40 then shut it down (before closing lid) then left it off all night. Today came back on fine.

 

[EmuGuy]

So folks; make sure to unplug your charger before initiating shutdown or you might wake up to an empty battery!

Hi there. That must have been my mistake last night. I had run my battery down to about 20%, so I shutdown my Pandora and plugged it in to charge overnight. This morning I unplugged the charger, and tried booting it up, but when it got to the desktop, it immediately shut down again, due to extremely low battery. :huh:

So, I guess the Pandora has to be awake in order to charge...? Or, I plugged in the charger before shutdown was complete...to be honest, I don't remember exactly what I did in what order, which doesn't help troubleshooting. Anyway, hope this helps someone else.

EDIT: Hmmm, upon reading the wiki, it's all right there in black & white...

"Since the Pandora has to be powered whilst it is charging, low power mode is best for fastest charging, and will even allow a full charge to be achieved from USB. Opening the screen whilst in low power mode currently enables the screen, but leaves the clock at 14 MHz. You can use the power switch to return to the previously selected clock speed (this behaviour is under discussion [as of hotfix3], some find it confusing since it is not symmetrical, and the power switch has a different function depending on the state)"

Cool. Yeah, I find it confusing that closing the lid doesn't put it to 'sleep' like a normal laptop - but that's fine, since Pandora isn't a normal laptop. I also didn't know you could restore the clock speed with the power switch, I just assumed it was a software bug.

 

[mali]

^ It's always best to charge when the Pandora is already switched on and toggle the power switch once to go into low power mode for fast charging.