Hi Josch, I did it. So in the end the red light of charging gets on when I bridge the connection. According to that there is a problem with my charger module. Similarly to the beginning of this thread, my pocket reform was working perfectly before I left for some weeks.
I am planning to buy the lipo charger but the shipping is 6 times the price of the charger.
Is there a way to recharge them without buying more stuff?
Hey there.
It doesn’t have to be the adafruit charger. Just check for a charger with the correct connectors.
There are a lot of shops that sell this type of charger.
Check your local online shops. I’m sure you’ll find something fitting.
Cheers,
Triss
Additionally to what Triss said: you are maybe still within the warrenty period of your device. Consider contacting MNT about this issue via their support form.
Do you maybe have a multimeter and are able to measure the battery voltage? Another theory is that you have one of the old charging boards which are known to break. Your board might’ve kicked the bucket and in that case MNT will replace it for you free of charge.
Thank you for the answers.
I still have the warranty, I got my pocket reform last September. I contacted support and I am waiting for their answer.
Due to my absolute ignorance about electronics, I feel the need to make sure I am following what is going on here. This is what I am understanding:
My pocket reform is not booting and there are two possible causes.
The first one is that the charging board is broke and in that case getting a new one from MNT would solve it.
The second possibility is that for some reason I don’t understand when batteries are empty below some threshold they cannot be charged again even with a working charging board. In this case what I need to do is to get a compatible lipo charger (that doesn’t have the problem of the battery too drained to work) and use it to charge the batteries above the threshold.
Is my understanding correct?
Assuming I am right. I do have an analog multimeter but I don’t know how to use it. So I just read how to use it online and it seems the batteries are completely drained. Let me just describe how I determined this using the analog multimeter and please let me know if it is incorreclt:
You can see a picture of the multimeter here: Gardner Bender GMT-318 Analog Multimeter, 6 Funct, 14 Range, Tests AC/DC Volt, DC Current, Resistance, Decibel, and Battery, Manual Range, 1/Ea
I saw how to disconnect the batteries here: MNT Pocket Reform Batteries Replacement - iFixit Repair Guide
I set the lever at 10V, and made the red needle touch the metal of the red cable coming out of the battery and the black needle with the metal coming out of the black cable. They just made contact with the metal in the plastic thing that I disconnected (that’s all it’s needed right?). The needle of the multimeter didn’t move at all. (When I connect the multimeter with the same setting to an AA battery it does move and shows me the voltage of the battery in the 10V scale.)
Please let me know if something is incorrect in what I did.
Assuming my test was correct and the batteries are drained now I need to get a lipo charger. My question now is how to determine a lipo charger is compatible. From what I am reading in the previous posts, one thing is that it should give anywhere between 100 to 500 mA. And then, what is the name of the correct connector?. How did you know the adafruit one was compatible? just from the pictures? So I need to look for a lipo charger that gives me those mA and then from the picture recognize the connector? (are there similar connectors with a different size? )
Finally, when I followed the instructions from the mnt support page. At some point I bridged pins 2 and 3 to test the charging board and after that a red led lighted when I plugged the charger to the pocket reform. At that point are the batteries charging? Could this be an alternative solution to buying the lipo charger?
Thank you for your patience and help.
I tried all the options I mentioned last time and my pocket reform is working again.
So first know that the bridge between pins 2 and 3 does not charge the batteries, it seems it just bypasses the batteries.
I found a lipo charger with a local provided and that worked.
Thanks for your help.