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Gear / Technical Help => Battery Boxes, Preamps, Mixers, ADCs, and Processors => Topic started by: DCDireWolf on March 10, 2005, 09:16:40 PM

Title: ua-5 not taking any juice from battery?
Post by: DCDireWolf on March 10, 2005, 09:16:40 PM
so i went to tape mofofunka and the duo the other night and for some reason, the ua-5 won't turn on.  I use the walmart special 9 volt lithium ion battery to power it, never have had trouble before.  but for some reason, it just won't power on.

so i patched.  got home, and now, the next day, i pull out the ua-5, connect it to the battery, and it works just fine!

any ideas on why it didn't work at the show?

only thing i've come up with so far is that before I left for the show i connected my mic cables and svu connectors to the ua-5, to cut down on set up time upon arrival.  is the machine tempremental that way?  Also, it was colder than a whore's goodbye out so the equipment was kinda cold until i got inside the venue.

but this has never happened before.  it's got me scratching my head.
Title: Re: ua-5 not taking any juice from battery?
Post by: krebsy on March 10, 2005, 09:26:08 PM
Did you happen to push the little charge checker button on the batt while you had troubles? Sometimes they go into some sort of overload protection mode. The batt is fully charged, but you get no juice and no charge indication when you push that little button. Plugging it into the wall charger seems to reset it.
Title: Re: ua-5 not taking any juice from battery?
Post by: DCDireWolf on March 10, 2005, 09:27:23 PM
I did push that button and got nothing.  I'll have to start bringing the wall charger with me to shows just in case.
Title: Re: ua-5 not taking any juice from battery?
Post by: Brian on March 11, 2005, 10:26:02 AM
super cold?

this is a long shot but completely possible......


 it is possible that because your batteries and cables got so cold that when you brought your gear bag into the venue it warmed up too quickly and condensation happened within the battery or power cable or UA5(somewhere basically) and caused a short.  maybe "short" is not the right word?

so the next day, after your bag was inside your residence all night, the condensation went away and the battery was able to pass on some power to your ua5.
Title: Re: ua-5 not taking any juice from battery?
Post by: JackoRoses on March 11, 2005, 10:44:18 AM
Did you happen to push the little charge checker button on the batt while you had troubles? Sometimes they go into some sort of overload protection mode. The batt is fully charged, but you get no juice and no charge indication when you push that little button. Plugging it into the wall charger seems to reset it.
It got me last night...
End of 1st set 3 leds, beginning of 2nd set no lights on the V3.
No LEDS on the battery, panic shoots through me as I have a patcher.
Grab the 2nd battery and plug in and rolling. Come home plug the bastard battery in
3 LEDS again... SLA's are tried and true and I know that would not of happened to one.
Almost tempting to grab one of them up too.. Dam my shoulder don't need any more weight heh..
Title: Re: ua-5 not taking any juice from battery?
Post by: krebsy on March 11, 2005, 11:06:33 AM
This little bug is the one and only reason I carry a single 9V RC batt with me.  Just in case...
Title: Re: ua-5 not taking any juice from battery?
Post by: PG on March 11, 2005, 11:29:23 AM
Did you happen to push the little charge checker button on the batt while you had troubles? Sometimes they go into some sort of overload protection mode. The batt is fully charged, but you get no juice and no charge indication when you push that little button. Plugging it into the wall charger seems to reset it.
It got me last night...
End of 1st set 3 leds, beginning of 2nd set no lights on the V3.
No LEDS on the battery, panic shoots through me as I have a patcher.
Grab the 2nd battery and plug in and rolling. Come home plug the bastard battery in
3 LEDS again... SLA's are tried and true and I know that would not of happened to one.
Almost tempting to grab one of them up too.. Dam my shoulder don't need any more weight heh..

This happened to me at moe. a few weeks back. Doug Oade thought I may have a bad charger though.
Title: Re: ua-5 not taking any juice from battery?
Post by: jk labs on March 13, 2005, 09:42:02 AM
super cold?

this is a long shot but completely possible......


 it is possible that because your batteries and cables got so cold that when you brought your gear bag into the venue it warmed up too quickly and condensation happened within the battery or power cable or UA5(somewhere basically) and caused a short.  maybe "short" is not the right word?

so the next day, after your bag was inside your residence all night, the condensation went away and the battery was able to pass on some power to your ua5.

I think the idea of this being caused by condensations within the control and safety circuitry inside the battery could be right on. There is an entire brain in there and who knows what it takes to upset it.  Likewise, the LI-Ion batts outputting other voltages than 3.6, 7.2 and 10.8 have a DC-DC converter which could have thermal or moisture issues as well.

A 12 Volts 10 Watts lightbulb with the proper connector attached, would have told in an instant if the battery was ok with delivering 750 mA or so. 
Title: Re: ua-5 not taking any juice from battery?
Post by: poorlyconditioned on March 14, 2005, 03:08:23 PM
so i went to tape mofofunka and the duo the other night and for some reason, the ua-5 won't turn on.  I use the walmart special 9 volt lithium ion battery to power it, never have had trouble before.  but for some reason, it just won't power on.

so i patched.  got home, and now, the next day, i pull out the ua-5, connect it to the battery, and it works just fine!

any ideas on why it didn't work at the show?

only thing i've come up with so far is that before I left for the show i connected my mic cables and svu connectors to the ua-5, to cut down on set up time upon arrival.  is the machine tempremental that way?  Also, it was colder than a whore's goodbye out so the equipment was kinda cold until i got inside the venue.

but this has never happened before.  it's got me scratching my head.

I've been playing with these 9V batteries recently.  I took one apart and found inside: six cells, a series circuit of two groups, each made of of three parallel cells.  Then there is a DC-DC converter of some sort to step up to 9V out.

I tried to power a NJB3 with the battery using a 7805 (passive) regulator.  It would intermittently shut down the battery.  It would just output 0V and require a disconnect-reconnect step to get juice again.  This was worst when I tried to both run the NJB3 and charge the internal battery.

The solution?  I ripped the battery apart and soldered wires directly to the cells!  Got about 8.5V w/o load.  Run that into the regulator and it works great.  So,  I'm using the builtin charger circuit, but I'm not using the step up and I'm also using no overload protection!  Be careful with this.  Don't short the battery or anything!.  Note: There *may* be a small "idle" current on the 7805 even when no load is connected.  But it is probably not significant.

Anyway, the experiment continues...

  Richard
Title: Re: ua-5 not taking any juice from battery?
Post by: snoknight on March 19, 2005, 12:55:09 PM
hell yea R. did you skuff the batt surface first? ;) my dewalt 18.5 took that kinda love, damn pack lasted longer and stronger than the others. +T. for all the others just wear protection!!
as for trickle voltage @ 8.5, tongue voltage...
Dave