Batteries in Remote - 4xAAA - only one always drains completely, is that normal?

Almighty1

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I have a question. On a DISH 40.0 remote which uses 4xAAA batteries, it seems that when the battery warning comes up, only 1 of the 4 batteries actually is completely drained while the other 3 still show a full charge. Is that normal if all of them are the same capacity Eneloops?
 

Cekid

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heh, i have the same question...i use 4xAA in audio recorder and have the same thing...one of them is drained and the rest of 3 are still ok...same thing happens with some other remotes etc...
 

Arizona_Mike

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Can you tell the connection of the battery holder? Are Is there an intermediate voltage tap (possibly for maintaining memory)?

Any chance the batteries are old and mismatched? Do you have a way to measure capacity and internal resistance?

Mike
 

ChrisGarrett

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Can you tell the connection of the battery holder? Are Is there an intermediate voltage tap (possibly for maintaining memory)?

Any chance the batteries are old and mismatched? Do you have a way to measure capacity and internal resistance?

Mike

I use a twenty year old Gateway Destination RF keyboard and pistol grip mouse and the former is 4xAA and the latter is 4xAAA. In the beginning, I was running Rat Shack IC3 (Rayovac) 15 minute batteries and it would always seem that one was either lower than the others, or it was '...hey, why is this voltage a negative number?' LOL!

I'm going with 'is there a weaker battery? for $500, Alex'.

Chris
 

Lynx_Arc

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I agree with ChrisGarrett..... you have one weak battery that either is not being charged up all the way or has lower capacity causing it to be drained far faster than the others. Over the years of using NIMH and LSD NIMH (Rayovac Hybrids) I've found that when there is batteries in series and no mechanism in the device to protect nimh from being over discharged over time you can wind up with 1 or 2 bad cells. What first can happen is in a 4 cell device that can operate down below perhaps 4v starting with about 5.6v using nimh (x4) it drains them all about equally to 1.2v/cell leaving 4.8v then keeps draining and if the batteries differ in capacity a little the weakest (lowest capacity) cell ends up drained to 0 and even reverse charged in some cases. The next time the cells are used the weakest one has been damaged and loses even more capacity each charge cycle.
I'm guessing one way to check and see if the device can operate on lower than optimal voltage is to take out 1 battery and use a wire or something to jump across for it and see if the device works on 3 batteries. Repeat this taking 2 batteries out and if you can figure out how to jump across the 2 missing cells try and see if the device operates off 2.

I've in the past had a remote that used an alkaline 6v square battery (type J I think) that I soldered 3AAAs together in series to replace it with in use as the special battery was hard to find and cost about $5-$6 back in the mid 80s and you could get a 4 pack of AAA alkalines for about $2 or less.
 

iamlucky13

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Lynx Arc's post sounds spot on.

I guess part of the lesson is to avoid running NiMH batteries in series all the way down if you can. It's not always possible, but even if you're only getting dozens of charges out of a set, they should still be economical compared to alkalines.

The relatively abrupt voltage decline when NiMH are fully discharged might make this hard to manage if the remote doesn't turn on its battery indicator until the batteries are almost completely empty. You might be better off just charging your batteries on a schedule instead of waiting until the light comes on.

If that battery is bad enough to be a problem, I suppose you might as well go ahead and replace it, in which case, another battery will likely become the weak link. That's just the way it goes. You could also try doing a couple refresh cycles, especially if you have a fancy charger with that function built in. I'm not sure that does anything for NiMH batteries that have experienced reversal, though.
 

Arizona_Mike

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If you have a weak battery the other batteries will run it down quick and even reverse its polarity as happened to Chris.

I would trash the one that keeps getting discharged. Even better if you have an analyzer and can test capacity and internal resistance.

Mike
 

fmc1

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A bad cell gets my vote also.



I would test all 4 to make sure the bad one did not damage the other 3. This has happened to me more often with AAA'a than AA'a. In all cases except one I was able to revive them with 3 or 4 refresh cycles. If you don't have a tester you could try moving the suspect bad cell to another position in the remote and see if the problem follows the cell or the bay. If you already tried that and the problem followed the cell. I would toss it if you can't test it in order to minimize damage to good cells.
 

Cekid

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i am sceptical about this bad cell theory...i am running brand new ikea ladda 2450 and one of them is emptier than another 3 in my recorder..ok, there is always a chance that some battery is bad from beginning but doubt it...

is there any chance that device itself are sucking more energy from one channel? just like that, somehow doesn't drain them equally?
 

Lynx_Arc

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i am sceptical about this bad cell theory...i am running brand new ikea ladda 2450 and one of them is emptier than another 3 in my recorder..ok, there is always a chance that some battery is bad from beginning but doubt it...

is there any chance that device itself are sucking more energy from one channel? just like that, somehow doesn't drain them equally?

First off batteries in series have no separate channels they are all on the SAME channel so as they drain the current and voltge flows from/through ALL simultaneously when used. With that said it isn't about draining them equally but rather one cell having less energy to start with to drain. If you have 4 cells that are labeled at 800mah but in actuality 3 have 800mah and one has 700mah then after 700mah is drained from the 4 cells then the voltage of the 3 cells still having 100mah may be at 1.2v or a little more with the 4th cell voltage starting to drop below 1.0v. At the point the 3 800mah cells (initial) are drained another 50mah further leaving 50mah of capacity in them the 4th cell has nothing left in it and has had 50mah of current forced through it as it is dropping it to 0v (itself, internally) or even reversing the voltage in it backwards. This reversing can damage it causing it to most likely lose some capacity when it is recharged. The capacity loss if only lets say 50mah can leave it after one cycle of this going from 700mah to 650mah and after a dozen cycles it could be a lot less than half capacity. I'm guessing that the lower the capacity of the weakest cell compared to the rest the faster it is forced into reversal after it is fully drained and the longer it is being damaged and the more damage (loss of capacity) it takes.

I've had batteries that were AAs that started at 2100mah and after damaged in series and several cycles of refreshing on my BC900 charger only recovered to 1200mah and some even worse only back to about 600mah. If you compare this to a AAA cell that would probably equate to about 200mah or so giving you 1/4 the runtime before problems.

Like I said earlier there are probably some devices that would operate (barely) off 2 batteries in a 4 battery device if they were not too fully discharged. These devices may not truly "operate" the device but may however still be able to retain "memory" or run the electronics at a minimal level and if doing that continue to drain the remaining voltage (batteries) down to nearly zero volts over periods of months or years thus having a chance not to only damage one battery but 2 or 3 of the 4 cells even as one battery ends up having slightly more capacity than the rest enough to reverse the second to the last battery.
 

Almighty1

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In my case, these are all eneloops and I marked the batteries with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4. All the batteries are good and I have changed the order of the batteries so that all numbers were the first battery and everytime, it is always the first one that drains while the other 3 are fine.
 

ChrisGarrett

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In my case, these are all eneloops and I marked the batteries with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4. All the batteries are good and I have changed the order of the batteries so that all numbers were the first battery and everytime, it is always the first one that drains while the other 3 are fine.

Call up DISH and have them send you a new one, or just live with it.

You seem to have ruled out the batteries as an issue.

Chris
 

CuriousOne

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I have Logitech Harmony 650 remote, which also uses 4 AAAs and drains 1000mAh NiMH's in about 1 month too, and always one cell is close to zero or even reversed. So I did it an upgrade - since there is a plenty of space inside remote, I've installed lipo battery with pcb and charging board, so now remote lasts longer, and for recharging, I just connect it to 5v charger via existing usb socket.
 

Lynx_Arc

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I have Logitech Harmony 650 remote, which also uses 4 AAAs and drains 1000mAh NiMH's in about 1 month too, and always one cell is close to zero or even reversed. So I did it an upgrade - since there is a plenty of space inside remote, I've installed lipo battery with pcb and charging board, so now remote lasts longer, and for recharging, I just connect it to 5v charger via existing usb socket.
I thought the Harmony 650 used 2AA batteries?
 

CuriousOne

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Mine uses 4xAAA batteries, but model might be Harmony 652, don't remember exactly, it is quite old.
 

Lynx_Arc

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Mine uses 4xAAA batteries, but model might be Harmony 652, don't remember exactly, it is quite old.
I was looking at Amazon's page and it lists it at 2AA batteries. They did make a lot of odd numbered remotes taking 4AAA, 628 and 670/680 series according to a google search. The 650 is one of the later models I was looking at that takes 2AAs according to Amazon's site. I would rather have 2AAs than 4AAAs myself.... as less voltage but more power overall.
 

Almighty1

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I was looking at Amazon's page and it lists it at 2AA batteries. They did make a lot of odd numbered remotes taking 4AAA, 628 and 670/680 series according to a google search. The 650 is one of the later models I was looking at that takes 2AAs according to Amazon's site. I would rather have 2AAs than 4AAAs myself.... as less voltage but more power overall.

Good point, I know the DISH remotes like the 52.0 for example uses 2xAA's but it seems to have less functions compared to the 40.0 so I thought that was the reason it required less voltage. All the Harmony remotes I bought were the high-end model at the time it was purchased and they all used a battery pack that was not standard battery sizes.
 
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