Battery Status On Shipping


budweiser

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Will the Pandora ship with a precharged battery?
Will it have any charge from the testing of the unit itself before shipping ?
Thanks Bud...
 
The battery will have a small charge on it to keep it from going flat during shipping. LiPo batteries aren't fond of going flat. Best practice would be to charge it before doing anything with the unit.
 
Sorry to be n00bish, but why do the batteries need to be charged prior to shipping?
 
Jourdy288 said:
Sorry to be n00bish, but why do the batteries need to be charged prior to shipping?

Because if you leave your battery dead for too long, it's going to go bad fast.
 
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My best guess: batteries are all precharged by the factory to about 60%, maybe even only 40%. This ensures they will not slowly drain out for many months, without the fear of them wearing out from being overcharged for too long. For that reason, it is recommended to allow a full charge cycle before use, so you can bring it back up to 100%. Otherwise you might accidentally flatline it in just a couple hours of use.
 
It really doesn't matter at all.
All LiPo and LiIon batteries must have some charge on them or they die. You can never fully drain the charge of those batteries because they have a circuit in order to prevent you from killing them.

And it doesn't really matter whether you charge them or not before using them, it has already been proven that a longer or shorter charging cycle doesn't affect a LiIon (and by analogy, LiPo) battery.
 
These apply to LiPo as well:

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-5B.htm
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-12.htm
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

edit: "Extreme low voltage must also be prevented. The safety circuit is designed to cut off the current path if the battery is inadvertently discharged below 2.50V/cell. At this voltage, most circuits render the battery unserviceable and a recharge on a regular charger is not possible.
There are several safeguards to prevent excessive discharge. The equipment protects the battery by cutting off when the cell reaches 2.7 to 3.0V/cell. Battery manufacturers ship the batteries with a 40% charge to allow some self-discharge during storage. Advanced batteries contain a wake-up feature in which the protection circuit only starts to draw current after the battery has been activated with a brief charge. This allows prolonged storage."

"Preparing new lithium-ion for use

Unlike nickel and lead-based batteries, a new lithium-ion pack does not need cycling through charging and discharging. Priming will make little difference because the maximum capacity of lithium-ion is available right from the beginning. Neither does a full discharge improve the capacity of a faded pack. However, a full discharge/charge will reset the digital circuit of a 'smart' battery to improve the state-of-charge estimation"
 
Etinin said:
You can never fully drain the charge of those batteries because they have a circuit in order to prevent you from killing them.
In the course of sitting around in Craig's garage for Two Months(tm), they may naturally lose their charge. Whether by active or passive discharge, once it drops below a certain point, the lithium begins to crystalize and that spells bad news for the battery. Hence why it should be reasonably charged by the factory.
But you don't want to over charge them either. Sitting at excessive levels (80%+) for Two Months(tm) could also result in battery damage.
Telling the user to fully charge the battery before use is just so they don't start playing it, and then complain when it only lasts for an hour or two.
 
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Lithium Polymer Batteries also have great lifespans, My PDA from 2003 uses a LiPo battery and it still to this day charges to about 87%. It has been drained to at most 50% but on most days around 20% and charged near daily since I bought it. I'm glad they went with LiPo for the Pandora, and I will be looking forward to many years of usage of that one battery. They probably make them better now than they did then too. 6 years and only 13% capacity loss, AMAZING.
 
So... the spare battery I ordered... should I charge it ocassionally and alternate it with the one that comes with the Pandora? What would be the best practice? :unsure:
 
LastPucho said:
So... the spare battery I ordered... should I charge it ocassionally and alternate it with the one that comes with the Pandora? What would be the best practice? :unsure:
Depends what you want to use it for. If you only want it for the occasional long trip, best practice suggests charging it to about 40%, sealing it in an airtight bag, and putting it in the fridge for storage. When you're about to go on your long trip, take it out, LET IT WARM UP NATURALLY, charge it and you're ready to go. That will allow it to still be charged to almost 100% even years later, so it can even serve as a replacement if your main battery eventually wears out. As you use the battery, it will slowly wear out. What starts off as 10 hours of usage might be only 9 hours after a year. Then 8, 7... after 5 years it might only hold half charge or less, while your fridge battery still has almost its full 10 hours.
Alternatively, you can regularly swap them; that way, after 5 years, both batteries are holding to 7.5 or 8 hours charge still.
 
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nikkopt said:
"Preparing new lithium-ion for use

Unlike nickel and lead-based batteries, a new lithium-ion pack does not need cycling through charging and discharging. Priming will make little difference because the maximum capacity of lithium-ion is available right from the beginning. Neither does a full discharge improve the capacity of a faded pack.
Correct. As for full discharging, I've accidentally discharged some of my batteries over the years (not to the internal cut-off point, just normal "flat"). That has always turned out to damage the capacity of the battery, so I try to avoid full discharge at all costs.

However, a full discharge/charge will reset the digital circuit of a 'smart' battery to improve the state-of-charge estimation"
Yep, but the Pandora battery (or any battery in phones or tablet-like devices like PDAs) are not of this type, as far as I know it applies to the kind of stacked cell batteries you can find in laptops. Some of them probably have some smart battery gauge circuitry built-in. The battery in my laptop has LEDs and buttons to press etc. and could possibly be a little smart.
 
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of course, there's always the possibility of shipping a running pandora :p
 
Tor said:
Yep, but the Pandora battery (or any battery in phones or tablet-like devices like PDAs) are not of this type, as far as I know it applies to the kind of stacked cell batteries you can find in laptops. Some of them probably have some smart battery gauge circuitry built-in. The battery in my laptop has LEDs and buttons to press etc. and could possibly be a little smart.

The Pandora may have cleverer, more notebook-like battery charge circuitray than the average phone/PDA. IIRC MWeston or Craig was enthusing about it here quite recently.
 
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Monk said:
The Pandora may have cleverer, more notebook-like battery charge circuitray than the average phone/PDA. IIRC MWeston or Craig was enthusing about it here quite recently.

If you want to know of the pandora's charger circuitry, go read on the TI TPS65950 - pandora's is not identical but pin-compatible:
http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/tps65950.html

The most interesting bits are in the TRM:
http://www.ti.com/litv/pdf/swcu050d

I'm getting boored of the guesswork here.
 
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urjaman said:
Monk said:
The Pandora may have cleverer, more notebook-like battery charge circuitray than the average phone/PDA. IIRC MWeston or Craig was enthusing about it here quite recently.

If you want to know of the pandora's charger circuitry, go read on the TI TPS65950 - pandora's is not identical but pin-compatible:
http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/tps65950.html

The most interesting bits are in the TRM:
http://www.ti.com/litv/pdf/swcu050d

I'm getting boored of the guesswork here.
The above is about the charging circuitry in the Pandora itself, which is interesting enough but it's not what we were talking about. The intelligent battery gauge that gets reset with a discharge is in the battery itself, and what I was saying is that you won't find those in batteries of the type found in phones/PDAs, and, almost certainly, Pandoras. Instead there's just the expected (but very important) protection circuit, which protects the battery against overcharging, undercharging, and temperature (which can also catch short-circuits).
 
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