Need help troubleshooting a dive light

darkavenger

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Apr 6, 2013
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Alright, so I built a can light awhile ago. It ended up flooding. I'm trying to revive it now, however I can't get it to turn on after overhauling the insides. I think the issue might be with the battery pack. It's 4 cells and I get a reading of about 16.2V from end to end. I have a protection circuit on it that I thought was causing the issue, but replacing it didn't help. I'm not sure why, but I can't get a reading from the output of the protection circuit. Any thoughts?
 

jspeybro

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Aug 13, 2009
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Belgium
It could be that the protection circuit kicked in to protect the battery for some reason. I'm not very familiar with these circuits.
Did you try charging the battery to see if it unlocks the circuit?

Perhaps you could show a picture and explain how the circuit is connected. maybe there's a mistake in the wiring?

Johan
 

Packhorse

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Nov 29, 2007
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Are they Li Ion cells?

An odd thing with some protection circuits is that they will go into protection mode and not come out of it unless you put the cells on charge.
 

darkavenger

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Apr 6, 2013
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Thank you very much! I was able to unlock the protection circuit and I'm moving on with the rebuild.
 

jspeybro

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Thank you very much! I was able to unlock the protection circuit and I'm moving on with the rebuild.

just for future reference, did charging fix it?

I'm starting to think that when the circuit is connected to the battery, that the sudden inrush of electrons upon first contact or an incomplete connection trips the circuit.

johan
 

darkavenger

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Apr 6, 2013
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Yes, charging it fixed it.

The original board was in fact dead. However, installing the new board that was tripped into 'protection mode' gave an illusion that the problem might be elsewhere.
 
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