Who's got the cure?

[KSagal]

I know a guy, who has a bad early LiIon, which was accidentally went dead by being plugged into a dead outlet...

This is the classic rear battery drops voltage below the threshold.

I know that some have been able to 'force' a bit of voltage into the battery, to bring it up to the minimum so that it can be charged...

If anyone is willing to share their knowledge, I would appreciate it...

I will gratefully take PMs on the topic, if that is the preferred communication level, or even an email...

Thanks...

[stinggray]

I was talking to Jason at MTO and he was saying something about opening them up and adding a terminal to give it a light charge to bring range. If it drops again its a lot simpler to give a charge. This was his method of repairing them when they drop to far. Try sending him a message.

[KSagal]

Thanks...

I am in contact with Jason now, and we are working on it..,

[canthackit]

I've got a rear battery that also will not charge and I know it's because it got below the "minimum threshold". So I too would be very interested in knowing how to jump start it so to speak so it might charge again. Any help would be appreciated.

[jgbackes]

It would be cool if someone were to publish a template, drill width and depth where to tap into the circuit board to provide the required jump start.

[pegg696]

The cure would be nice if it was able to put some juice into the battery by "regenerative braking".

Question..... Would it be possible to somehow "tow" or "pull" the Segway behind a vehicle (no need for the warnings on this of safety or burning out or speed or anything like that) so that just enough speed would be used to turn the tires to regenerate the batteries? The reason that I thought of this is because I was moving it around my basement and I heard the sound that it makes when you move it.

Or does the Segway actually have to be on for that type of reverse battery circuitry to happen. I am the one that Karl speaks of who has this problem this sping.

I am just wondering. It would be alot cheaper to have my buddy slowly drive, with me sitting in the back tailgate pulling the Segway behind the car trying to get some juice flowing.

Any opinions one way or another? Other than the usual "that would be unsafe" kind of thing.

pegg696

[BillPaxton]

the regenerative part is moot - if regenerative charging would beat the minimum charge threshold, plugging in to the wall would as well. I can't anser the second part of wour question but I can tell you when my wife first got her seg, it went dead downtown because the batteries needed reconditioning and we didn't know. I tried putting it in follow mode and pushing it in front of my seg to get a bit of charge, but it did not work.

+B

[pegg696]

Thank you Bill.

[MagiMike]

http://forums.segwaychat.com/showthread.php?t=17828&highlight=Lithium

[ru12cb4]

My battery indicators do not come one, of course, when plugged to line voltage; Info key only shows antenna indicator at the very top display; unit will not turn on; no indications on Info key; purchased 5/8/2007; Segway replaced batteries around August 2007 after less then 8 hours on the unit; I say around August since I was in Alaska for 3 months and they mismanaged the service very very badly it was a fiasco; stored unit Sept 19, 2007 in my dry, clean, heated basement; plugged them into line voltage and nada on one; the same one that Segway replaced the batteries in Alaska. Any idea of what the problem is? Do you know if this is a common problem? Any suggestions on correcting this? Does the warranty provide one year? And do you know if this type of problem has been covered. I just send an EM to Segway explaining the above.

[pam]

You might want to put your location in your profile so that if someone is near you they can offer recommendations based on the area where you are.

Good luck with the info key. How long have your batteries been without power? (How long has it been since the lights came on, that you noticed?)

Pma

[nora k]

at home troubleshooting: switch the battery in your infokey to the other one that came in your white box or try your second infokey. move machine to another outlet, switch out your surge protector, try another charging cord, reseat the batteries... not having any battery indicator lights at first glance seems like an outlet issue and not a segway issue.

batteries have a one year warranty from time of purchase, but that isn't extending the one year warranty on the innards of your machine, so this isn't something you want to talk to us about a lot - you want to contact your local dealer and get this on record and fixed while it could still be covered by the LM. your email to segway will start this paper trail.



My battery indicators do not come one, of course, when plugged to line voltage; Info key only shows antenna indicator at the very top display; unit will not turn on; no indications on Info key; purchased 5/8/2007; Segway replaced batteries around August 2007 after less then 8 hours on the unit; I say around August since I was in Alaska for 3 months and they mismanaged the service very very badly it was a fiasco; stored unit Sept 19, 2007 in my dry, clean, heated basement; plugged them into line voltage and nada on one; the same one that Segway replaced the batteries in Alaska. Any idea of what the problem is? Do you know if this is a common problem? Any suggestions on correcting this? Does the warranty provide one year? And do you know if this type of problem has been covered. I just send an EM to Segway explaining the above.

[mreisner]

If your lions "died" because of neglect, contact Dr Marty. He woke up both of mine. I've had them back for about a month and so far so good. He guarantees his work and the price is extremely reasonable.

[SEGsby]

The battery manuals state that you cannot expect to have a Segway's batteries off a charger for a month or more, and not have them damaged.

The computer boards on the batteries & the Segway itself, apparently draw low current that will slowly drain and eventually kill them.

It's my understanding that typical Lions that are totally drained, can explode when reconnected to normal recharge voltages. I'm guessing there is probably protective circutry that will not allow an unsafe recharge when a cell in a pack is too low to reasonably recover.

So don't let your Lion batteries drain to empty... EVER.

SEGsby


My battery indicators do not come one, of course, when plugged to line voltage; Info key only shows antenna indicator at the very top display; unit will not turn on; no indications on Info key; purchased 5/8/2007; Segway replaced batteries around August 2007 after less then 8 hours on the unit; I say around August since I was in Alaska for 3 months and they mismanaged the service very very badly it was a fiasco; stored unit Sept 19, 2007 in my dry, clean, heated basement; plugged them into line voltage and nada on one; the same one that Segway replaced the batteries in Alaska. Any idea of what the problem is? Do you know if this is a common problem? Any suggestions on correcting this? Does the warranty provide one year? And do you know if this type of problem has been covered. I just send an EM to Segway explaining the above.

[nora k]

trying to make my way around the board posting this information:

Inc. is instructing customers to keep their machine plugged in when not in use. if the machine is going to be stored for a prolonged period of time the batteries should be fully charged and then removed from the unit. they must be charged before six months passes in order to prevent damage.

questions? call your dealer. or pm me... but if i'm your dealer you should really call me. except today after 12:30 cause i'm on a segwayfesT call... oh never mind.

The battery manuals state that you cannot expect to have a Segway's batteries off a charger for a month or more, and not have them damaged.

The computer boards on the batteries & the Segway itself, apparently draw low current that will slowly drain and eventually kill them.

It's my understanding that typical Lions that are totally drained, can explode when reconnected to normal recharge voltages. I'm guessing there is probably protective circutry that will not allow an unsafe recharge when a cell in a pack is too low to reasonably recover.

So don't let your Lion batteries drain to empty... EVER.

SEGsby

[KSagal]

We should remember that this was a case where the machine was plugged in, but the owner did not realize that the socket in the wall was dead...

It was a mistake that could happen to any of us...

[nora k]

absolutely! then the thread morphed a little and ru12cb4 started discussing a separate case and also posted about it somewhere else in the forum. at that point responses started skewing in that direction... i think since the 20th posts have been hijacked to address this other user with battery issues.

We should remember that this was a case where the machine was plugged in, but the owner did not realize that the socket in the wall was dead...

It was a mistake that could happen to any of us...

[SEGsby]

When I got a new replacement battery for Herbie, it came with 5 pages of documentation titled," Important Information About Your Lithium-ion (Li-ion) Battery Packs."

Document version 2076-000001ab, at the top of page 4 of 5, states:

"Do not store your Segway PT or Battery Packs for more than one month without fully charging the packs at least once every thirty days. This could cause permanent damage to the Battery Packs."

SEGsby




trying to make my way around the board posting this information:

Inc. is instructing customers to keep their machine plugged in when not in use. if the machine is going to be stored for a prolonged period of time the batteries should be fully charged and then removed from the unit. they must be charged before six months passes in order to prevent damage.

questions? call your dealer. or pm me... but if i'm your dealer you should really call me. except today after 12:30 cause i'm on a segwayfesT call... oh never mind.

[nora k]

As of 04/08 dealers are instructed to impart as I stated below :)

When I got a new replacement battery for Herbie, it came with 5 pages of documentation titled," Important Information About Your Lithium-ion (Li-ion) Battery Packs."

Document version 2076-000001ab, at the top of page 4 of 5, states:

"Do not store your Segway PT or Battery Packs for more than one month without fully charging the packs at least once every thirty days. This could cause permanent damage to the Battery Packs."

SEGsby

[Speedy67]

Had this problem with the rear saphion battery of my i180. It wasn't plugged in for three months and had only about 9 Volts left.

I used my fully charged front battery to bring it back to life. All you need is three cables and a 100 Watts / 100 Ohms resistor. I connected my front battery to my rear battery with this resistor in the positiv pole cable for half an hour and then had 65 Volts on my rear battery. Enough to start the charging process without red light on the i180.

Note: The resistor must be cooled - like this one: http://www.conrad.de/goto.php?artikel=423157

Cabling is as follows: positive pole of front battery to resistor, resistor to positive pole of rear battery, negative pole of front battery to negative pole of rear battery.

Note: This is only for people wo are familiar with electronics and know what they are doing. You should let it do an electronics technician. There isn't any warranty that this works for anyone, but it worked for me.

Speedy

[bentbiker]

I connected my front battery to my rear battery with this resistor in the positiv pole cable for half an hour and then had 65 Volts on my rear battery. Enough to start the charging process without red light on the i180.

Speedy,
Thanks for the post; rep points to you. This means the circuitry for preventing charging below a certain threshold voltage must all reside in the base and the external charger. That means that a mountain of batteries exists somewhere that are probably five minutes away from being totally fine. The source could be the second battery as you describe, 6 auto batteries in series, or a regulated DC power supply.

Note that this procedure is not without risk. We don't know how prone our Fe-Phosphate Li-Ions are to the problem, but the general warning is that too low a voltage within a cell can cause one of the electrodes (anode or cathode?) to separate internally from the electrolyte and the gap can cause arcing and potentially a fire. Having seen the low probability of fire from one cell extending to others, I'd be willing to risk it under a watchful eye.

[MagiMike]

+1 rep points well done

http://forums.segwaychat.com/images/icons/icon14.gif

[MTOBATTERY]

I wouldn't recommend bringing the voltage up so quickly. It would be much safer to ramp the voltage up from low to high a few volts at a time over a few hours. As previously mentioned taking a battery from 5V to 70V+ in a few seconds is definitely not without risk.

[drmarty]

There is a lot more to this than meets the eye. Congratulations to Speedy67. He was lucky. If you do this, take his warning. Cool the resistor. And oh, yes. do it outdoors so you don't burn your house down.

And Hopefully you will wind up with 2 good batteries not 2 DEAD batteries. How did he monitor it?.

I use a bunch of very expensive electronic equipment and many different processes to Save the batteries. And we test the status of the batteries. We have found some that are brought back to charge on the machine but are no good. They just drop off in a few minutes. We can and do test your batteries and guarantee what we do. If your battery isn't good, that is it drops off we won't charge you. So far all the batteries we have done for individuals have been good, however. One of the people has posted (thanks to her) and there are many more which I assume are happy.

Although the Li Fe Po4 or Lithium iron phosphate chemistry isn't going to burst into a chemical fire we are dealing with a 5.4 ampere hour 78 volt battery and that is enough energy to cause a huge problem - fire. See the previous posts by Desert Seg and others.

Remember folks, safety first. In radio control airplanes they have post after post about burned down houses, cars, SUV's because of the Lithium batteries. We don't need to hear about that here, please.

Also remember the large circuit board inside the battery. They say to protect it from static electricty. I wonder about the large spark when you connect two batteries together.

By the way we can test your batteries and give you back the data and graph showing it's condition if you are really concerned and want to know how good they are. Or if you are buying a battery or a Segway.

DocMarty
714 757-9799
Proprietor of the Battery Community College.

And - Lot's of excitement with NiMH is coming.

[Speedy67]

I think my rear battery survived this procedure without any pain. The resistor was only getting handwarm and I didn't notice any change in the temperature of both batteries.

I also did some tests regarding my cruising range and it seems to be fine too.

But you are right - this procedure is not recommended by the manufacturer. On the other side, I don't think you risk the healthy of the front battery and I can't accept to throw away a $800 battery (or even $1200 here in Germany) that needs only some cents in electric power to come back to life.

Some more assistance from the manufacturer for this cases of "dead" battery would be needful. The Segway manual doesn't state at any point, that unplugging the Segway for a long time will end in a $ 800 hurt...

Speedy

[MTOBATTERY]

You sure do risk the health of the front battery by doing this. If the rear battery has other problems you can in turn translate the problem to the front battery. Example: If the rear pack has a bad cluster(s) in it the front battery will be charging the rear battery at a much higher charge rate and possible drop to a low enough voltage that it cannot be recognized by the charger.

I certainly wouldn't expect your to throw the battery away either. I think Dr. Marty is just trying to express his safety concerns to others. We all understand why you did it. Remove the batts from your Seg after a full charge next time you store it for an extended period and you'll be fine. I think a dealer posted here recommending charging it at least every three months.