Pocket Reform in coma after deep discharge [solved]

MNT Pocket Reform
1

Hey there :grinning_cat:

I didn’t use my Pocket Reform for quite some time and now it seems completely dead. Had it on a charger overnight but not even the led on the main board seems to light up.

I now disconnected and reconnected the batteries, I hope it’ll charge now.

Any other ideas what I can do about it? It was perfectly bootable when I last tried.

Thanks a lot in advance.

Cheers,
Triss

2

Hey there, sorry to hear! Does the OLED display anything when the Pocket is plugged in and press Hyper+Enter and then B? Also what charger and USB-C cable are you using?

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3

Hey there,

OLED is completely dead, no response when I press hyper + enter

I use a PinePower 65 W charger with a Pinecil USB-C cable. Should be sufficient to power the Pocket.

Cheers,
Triss

4

This could be a broken battery board. Could you follow the steps described (with photos) on https://support.mnt.re/ to find out?

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5

Thanks :grinning_cat:
Didn’t know MNT had this cool trouble shooting page. Gonna give if a try tomorrow.

Cheers,
Triss

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6

Feel free to let us know how it goes and what was the problem in the end :slight_smile:

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7

I highly doubt this would be a broken battery board if it was perfectly working before hand, my first guess is that one of the batteries has dropped below the recoverable charging amps and now can’t talk to the charging board at all. This fail state has shown up a few times lately. If they have a volt meter they could open the bottom and check what the batteries are reporting.

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8

This happened to me couple of times with V2 charging board. Both times I’ve charged one of the cells outside the Pocket for 10 minutes and then it was able to start charging inside the Pocket. I recall asking about it on IRC, but I don’t recall any answers. I’ll try to measure voltage that’s left in those cells next time it happens.

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9

Hey there :cat_face:

Sounds like the way to recover my system. How did you jump-charge the batteries? Do I need any special equipment for this?

Cheers,
Triss

10

Yeah, any 3.7v lipo charger would suffice, provided the polarity is correct. I think I’ve used this one Adafruit Micro Lipo - USB LiIon/LiPoly charger [v2] : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits

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11

Nice! This looks like a very useful emergency kit to bring on a trip where the computer has to work.

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12

Hey there :grinning_cat:

Looks like this actually did the trick. I got the batteries over the deep discharge threshold and the system seems to charge now. Oled is working, but I haven’t booted it yet.

My recommendation is to have one of these chargers ready, just in case :grinning_cat_with_smiling_eyes:

I guess this laptop will teach me a lot.

Cheers, Triss

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13

I have it taped with some kapton tape inside the bottom case, yes.

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14

Couldn’t agree more with this.

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15

If you don’t mind my asking, did you set your charger at 300 mA ? My charger can only go as low as 500 mA. I guess that should be fine …

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16

I have it set to 500mA

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17

Hey there :grinning_cat:
My charger only does 100 mA in normal mode and I just used it to revive the batteries.
I attached a power monitor to the USB cable. After connecting the battery it just drew like 14 mA. I waited until the current went up to 100 mA on each battery and then used the Pocket’s battery board to charge the rest.

I hope this helps.

Cheers, Triss

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