My norns’s battery seems to be on its last wheels. Is there any suitable replacement to the old PKCELL LP803860? I ordered an equivalent-looking (3.7V 2000mAh) 103454 which seems to be of reversed polarity, whoops!
you can usually reverse the connector by using a pin to release each wire from the housing and then reconnect it as needed. can you provide a link and photo?
I resorted to Amazon for this one: https://www.amazon.com/EEMB-2000mAh-Battery-Rechargeable-Connector/dp/B08214DJLJ
The battery states very clearly not to disassemble it, but of course that’s immediately what I did. I removed the outer layer of yellow plastic, which I assume is some kind of inflammable/protective layer. I don’t know what this IC is, though, and reversing the polarity makes me nervous about its behavior.
There was a review describing a process for replacing the battery in the SNAP-ON ECPRB042 flashlight which described a process similar to what you described. The photos don’t really match the description, though.
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ok don’t mess with the IC’s etc. just use a pin to lift the flap of the white connector (second photo) which will release the red wire. do the same with the black wire, then switch the positions by just pushing them back into the white connector.
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Alrighty, lifting the flaps worked fine. However, upon further investigation, it seems there is something else wrong here (possibly some power regulation-adjacent circuitry misbehaving/broken), so I’ll be reaching out for more help beyond the scope of this thread.Thank you for the advice on polarity-flipping!
Hey homie,
Should I hit up the CS e-mail if I’m having issues with the battery calibration? I have a feeling my factory unit (from the silver round, second most recent) is showing 0 percent when I still have a bunch of juice left.
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there’s a known issue with battery calibration on the software side. we hope to have a more legit battery estimator soon— presently it’s very conservative
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Cool - no big deal.
For the time being it’s nice to get a lot of advanced warning. Just wish I could do something to clear the LOW BATTERY message off the screen temporarily.
Thanks for the follow up!
that’s not a bad idea. UI would make way more sense to clear the message on key action, and pop it back up every few minutes
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I still get the low battery indicator even when i have usb power plugged into it, is that normal? I’ve also had it plugged in all night so not sure why it wouldn’t be charged
this might be actually symptomatic of a bad battery that needs replacing. i’d recommend removing the battery in case it fails.
i’m working on an quick feature to disable the battery warning now
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wow far out i guess i have had my norns for about 3 years now, time flies. is there any documentation on how to perform the battery replacement? & will it run without a battery if I have power connected?
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we have a disassembly video
sadly i’ve now seen enough anomalies with batteries to have less confidence. (this is generally the takeaway from doing any sort of production. a “normal person” only experiences a limited number of batteries in their life, so failures feel somewhat rare. on the other hand, overseeing the health of thousands of devices demonstrates quickly that this technology is highly problematic).
replacement battery info here — note, monome no longer has spare batteries. we’ve completely out and don’t have a sane way to restock a small number: we’d just buy them from adafruit ourselves if needed.
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I took my battery out a while back and have been running this snippet as a mod to disable the warning. Place in lib/mod.lua in a new script folder:
-- mod to disable low battery warning
local mod = require 'core/mods'
mod.hook.register("system_post_startup", mod.this_name, function()
screen.update_low_battery = screen.update_default
end)
mod.menu.register(mod.this_name, {})
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my memory says yes but i could be wrong
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@pftjschute. yes! i do this all the time to test boards ahead of connecting battery, which can sometimes be a tight undo if something is wrong elsewhere in the circuit.
@dewb that is clever and a perfect use of mods
just added a system setting and will get it in the next norns update
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still a bit unclear though, is it unusual that I’m getting the low battery indicator even though my norns is plugged in?
sorry for any added mud! no, not unusual – the battery is technically initialized at 0% until the system gets an updated reading, so the warning conditions will be met. running dewb’s mod is a great call until the next norns release which adds tehn’s toggle-able battery status.