MAKERbuino with defective battery [SOLVED]

Well, it has not been 10 days since I have my MAKERbuino, and I already have a new problem. :cold_sweat:

Yesterday I found it did not light. I thought the battery had run out. I left it loading all night, more than 8 hours.

And today I went to try and not go on. If I remove the power connector it will shut down. :angry:

I really think I have a faulty console.

YouTube Video >> MAKERbuino turns off when the power cord is removed.

It sure looks like there is no battery connected.
From the picture, the blue LED indicates that the charger has finished (voltage at 4.2V).
The charger is connected to the main PCB ok, otherwise the Makerbuino would not turn on.
Disconnecting the power while on indicates that the battery is open circuit.
If you have a volt meter, try to measure (on DC Volts range on a multimeter) the BATT- and BATT+ terminals with the unit turned OFF, and the power supply not connected to the unit.
It is unlikely that the battery is faulty. Could you take a picture of the other side please.

Thank you @Eddie,

I will try to find a voltmeter, but I have none at hand here at home today.

In fact, 2 days before it worked correctly, and the console I have not soldered it, I ordered it already assembled, so it has to be some manufacturing defect.

I leave you some pictures, but I do not see anything strange.

Thanks for the photos. I cannot see anything out of the ordinary.
One point of interest would be the soldering / connection point of the battery connector to the main PCB.
Everything in the photos looks to be good.

@gabimarti you need to strip you’re Makerbuino down, remove the case and do a thorough check of the wires on the battery and solder joints on the battery charger board to the main PCB.

I can clearly see that the wires from the battery have shorted or for some reason over heated?
see the following image you posted shows the battery wire damaged!..

This could of shorted out you’re battery, which may also mean the battery is defective and may have even damaged the charging board too?.

I think that’s the side of the SD card socket showing with the wire behind it, not a bit of damaged insulation. It’s not a great angle to get a loot at it.

@Dalemaunder you might be correct actually when I look closer, you can only advise on what’s put on the table I guess.

But still this is an battery/charger board issue.

No, I have not soldered anything. The console I ordered all assembled. The cable is good. The first 3 days I used it worked correctly.

There is no short circuit. It is an optical effect of the photo. The cable is in perfect condition.

I do not understand why @albertgajsak does not answer any messages :disappointed_relieved: I have posted on the forum, or the private message I sent them. I have checked all the cables, they are correct. I removed the connector, I made sure to put it well, and the problem is that it does not charge the battery.

I ordered the assembled console precisely to avoid problems of these. I wanted to focus only on programming.

I made a new video. I left the console by charging the battery for 2 hours. You can check (I do not know if it shows) as the little red led flashes with the console off, when the console is turned on, the led lights up intensely. But when removing the cable the console is turned off. :sweat:

Please @albertgajsak, tell me something, :weary: it is not normal that in less than 10 days, having used the console only 3 times to load programs no longer works for me. :angry:

MakerBuino do not charge battery

I know it sucks a lot, but Albert and the rest of CircuitMess are probably having the hardest time leading with all the orders… It will probably take a while until they reply…

If you are interested in buying replacements yourself, I think the exact ones are:

I’m sure once the orders stabilize, they will refund the part of money for the broken components.

The only problem is you’ll have to replace them yourself or ask someone to do it. And the waiting for the components to arrive from China… Maybe you are able to find them in an electronics store…

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On both of mine, when the battery is charging correctly, it is a solid red LED (not flashing).
A solid Blue LED indicates that the charge has completed.
I can only assume that a flashing red LED would indicate a battery fault.

I was only asking to see the soldering on the battery connector, to check if the connections between the PCB and the connector were good, as this is not shown on your previous photos.

It sounds like the battery has gone flat in the time you have used it initially, but for some reason, it is not charging, and probably has never charged.

The two parts mentioned by luke27 are my two suspects as well. With the volt meter measuring the disconnected battery voltage, and the voltage in circuit charging and not charging, further information can be learned.

Thank you very much for your comment @luke27 , :smile:

I’ll wait a few days to see what @albertgajsak tells me, before I get in the way of disassembling the console and replacing the components. In fact my specialty is more programming than soldering components and I prefer to avoid this point. :sweat:

Curiously, the red LED has always blinked. I suppose that the three days that has lasted to me has been by the battery that already had loaded of origin.

I checked the battery and it has nothing to load, it has all run out. :weary:

The battery is charged when received and if you have play only a little with, it’s can last 3 days without problem. So effectively the battery is maybe fine and you can have a problem to charge it so you could maybe begin to buy the charging circuit.

@gabimarti, sorry for my late reply.

@Jean-Charles_Lebeau, @Eddie, @ladbsoft, @bitfogav, @Dalemaunder
thank you for helping @gabimarti out.

I must admit that charging circuit is the only thing we weren’t testing while manufacturing the assembled units because we were in a massive hurry. It seems that not testing that was a mistake as it caused @gabimarti’s problem.
A customer should receive an assembled unit fully functional and this is a result of bad QC.

@gabimarti, I will send you a new MAKERbuino free of charge. Please send me your Kickstarter username via PM.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Hello @albertgajsak

Private message sent.

I understand your setback. I await your news. Thank you.

same thing happened exact samething that happend to @gabimarti the blue and red light is on when i charge i am sure did every thing right charged for a while still didnt work looked at everything see if did anything wrong didnt and also the nuts were to small i taped the case on for little while and speaker does not work either. Also it was working perfectly fine before after about a few hours started getting bad