turbocad6

"tricking the balance plug" is a very bad idea if your thinking of trying to actually still charge the batteries in the mod. you can program the dna to run in power supply mode and then it will work as you want, don't need to trick the plug, but then you can't charge in the mod at all. there's a reason for the balancing leads and that's to prevent overcharging a single cell. if your planning on charging the cells individually and externally then that can work but you still have to match the cells well and keep them in pairs and monitor them yourself, stacking batteries has it's own complications and without on board balancing you have to be more careful because now you are the only monitoring the cells are going to have.

what??? noo, I've broken a few screens already because I was always thinking it's no big deal at ~$4 each to replace... now I've got several dna40's with no screens and now there's no way to get them??

you could also just enter the mods resistance as .02 or .03 without actually checking the mods resistance in a case like this too, as long as the resistance is stable and not jumping around this could straighten it right out. I have one mod that I'm testing with extra long leads to the atty in test configuration and without entering an offset for this it was sporadic and unstable, even would jump in and out of temp control, but once I added some resistance to the base mod in escribe she's rock solid now and temp control works fine and resistance reads fine. of course if there is an actual problem that's causing higher resistance readings then this is a band aid rather than a fix, but if it's rock solid and consistent, but only a few points off, this will recalibrate it to perfect... of course if you can actually measure the mods resistance would be best, but if not then from the data you've collected already you can make an educated guess by adding the .02 or .03

def something going on with mine today... I noticed the day before yesterday that it only charged to ~97% instead of 100%, but I used it all day yesterday with no problems then plugged it in to charge last night, didn't pay too much attention to where it was at exactly, but usually by the end of the day I'm in the 30% range give or take. this morning I woke and it was only at 69% and was charging at less than .1a,tried another charger and same thing so hooked it to escribe to see cells 1 & 2 were at 4.20v while cell 3 was at 3.79v... I've never blown a fuse or had any kinds of major issues with this thing, a few times I noticed that it would only charge to 99% instead of 100% but never really thought much of it. I tried to recover the cell by charging it by itself and got it up to over 4v by the time I had to leave and I'm vaping it today and will see where it's at tonight but this is weird, why would 2 cells charge to full 4.20 while the third didn't charge at all? it obviously charged so I don't know what to think..

yeah, mad scientist I crease it hard, I fold it and then pinch it hard, it doesn't remain as a crisp 180* fold like a piece of paper though of course, it does spring back somewhat, but it does hold it's shape well enough that when compressed it stays as a fold, I then do the same on the remaining folds too and yeah, I've been raping my stock of large screens from my spare dna40's too, need to get some extra screens

personally I believe that a fold or crease actually makes it more resistant to screen problems than just trying to do a gentle curve. the most delicate part and the most likely failure is right where the ribbon meets the glass, I make a fold a mm or 2 away from that and that really relieves stress at the weak point more than just trying to do a gentle curve. I make a hard crease then push it down to where I need it centered, then compress it to make the reverse creases. of course you don't want to bend it back and forth several times, but a solid bend and then securing it in place is no problem and much less chance of future problems too. heres how I do mine and have no button clearance issues and no worries of problems in the future

thanks for the thoughts willy, the only time I seen this problem was on day 1 of my build and at that point I was of the same mindset, be ready with a cable and escribe if it happens again, but then it worked fine for weeks with no sign of anything so when it happened again I wasn't ready, by the time I even thought about it the problem cleared itself again. honestly I don't think anything is shorted and never was though. except for these 2 anomalies it's been performing absolutely perfect, rock solid in atty analyzer and the fact that it just clears itself with a few button presses and nothing else, leads me to believe it's not actually shorted. don't know what the absolute lowest it would read before shorting is though, for example if .07 is the threshold and .06 would show as shorted, that may very well be my problem, maybe I'm hovering too low, but even that wouldn't make sense because even if I unscrew that atty it still shows shorted instead of check atomizer at this point it's just a weird anomaly at best, can't lay a finger on what's actually going on but if it happens again I won't even fire it until I can get to escribe

you can say that again, my first batch of dna40's was 0 for 6 and had me pulling my hair out of my head, but the first 2 dna200's of the first 4 I got have been just about perfect so far. sorry to hear about your troubles cotay, of course it may very well be something that has nothing to do with your build, but given the odds and the fact that it's 2 in a row in the same build I'd really scrutinize everything in the build at this point. I'm sure you have, just thinking out loud here

Yeah, same screen

It seems like even if this worked that it would likely just fail again. I read somewhere about the connector being used here not being to spec. Is that something that is being upgraded in the "non pre-production" boxes as far as you know? Ron yes, you're right, my advice was more about trying to positively identifying the problem.

Ha, wish that was possible Bob, if I ever hit the lotto then I'd love to spend all my time designing and building mods As this thing is right now it's not ideally set up for frequent battery swaps but that's only because I'm working within the constraints of an existing mod that's really only designed to hold a bottle and an 18650, if this overall design was modded a bit with an install like this in mind then it could very welll be designed for easy battery swapping though, even a 4 cell design could be done with only adding another 7mm to the width and that would give you battery life equal to a sammy 25r. Guess the point is that a dna200 bottom feeder doesnt have to be huge really

Just picked up some 0-80 and 0-90 screws and nuts and #0 wood srews at my local hobby store, anyplace that sells model trains should have stuff like this i think if you dont want to wait for delivery

What im talking about wouldnt apply if they soldered it to the board already but it still sounds like a connection problem to the main battery connection

it's all about miniaturizing everything as much as practical, screw terminals for the wire connections and a push in replaceable fuse would all make things easier to deal with too, but space is a primary concern

well I tested it and it works fine. good thing it does too, because I don't have any extra room to add the second connector if it didn't work this means a 2S can work with only 1 balance wire. I don't know that I'd recommend doing this on a regular install unless space is really tight, but it does work and may be a better alternative than just hard wiring if you don't have enough room for connectors. I like being able to remove the battery before I run this as a bottom feeder I need to seal it all up. before I seal it all up I'd like to test it and use it a bit to confirm the chip is worth sealing into the mod in the first place. I've damaged a few wood mods already ripping dna40's out of them, so I'd rather burn it in and test it as much as I can before sealing it all up. I built a test jig for the dna40's when they first came out because I was having so many problems with the first batch of dna40's, I built a few mods and had early chip failures and display glitches so I winded up building a test rig to test the chip extensively before all the work of building it into a mod then having to rip it back out. I still have all my first dna40 pre gold defect chips come to think of it, I still haven't sent them back to evolv yet but coming up on close to a year I better get them in before october wonder if they'll trade 8 dna40's for a few dna200's, after using these 200's I don't even want to build any 40's anymore I'm using the wand and extension from the dna40 tester to test this whole mod and battery, so far it's working perfect. I was even able to offset for the long extension by adding .04 to the base mod resistance in escribe which is pretty cool, couldn't do that with the dna40

tin the wire end well, then bend the tinned end a bit so you can lay the tinned end flat to a pad, then melt the tinned end of the wire while pressing it to the pad, a little flux would help, takes a few seconds to then see the pad itself start to flow and the tinned wire end to flow together, then remove the iron and don't let the joint move at all for several seconds after you remove the iron. I use a pin or a pick or even the tip of a razor blade to hold the tinned end to the pad while pressing it in, so when it melts it can compress flatter for a nice connection and it's then easy to hold it with no movement at all while it cools which is very important, if your using the iron to flatten the wire to the pad then yeah, it's going to lift when you remove the iron, but if your pressing the wire into the joint before you even bring the iron to it, and then hold it after the iron is removed it's just about foolproof

sorry this happened but really it's a good idea to try to not solder to a live board, you should solder everything first leaving the battery connection for last. the fuse isn't a very hard surface mount thing to do, the fuse ends and pads are pretty large compared to most typical things that are surface mount, it's worth a shot to try if you can get the fuse

opening the case is no problem at all for the warranty, I'd say open it and unplug the battery connector and plug it back in, wiggle it around a bit while escribe is monitoring and you may see pack voltage jump around a bit, it's most likely the main battery connection

this is strange, I haven't had the shorted msg in a long time but just now after device sleeping I picked up the device and it showed shorted again, unscrewed the atty, same shorted msg so I retightened the atty and pulsed fired it several times and again, just like before, it showed shorted and shorted and then eventually just goes away and everything is back to normal, still showing a rock solid .07 as it was before this happened, now it's working fine as if it never happened.

are you still using it with the small jst battery connector these originally shipped with? sounds like the connector may have been overloaded and now may be making a less than good connection, under load it can't supply enough so it resets as if the battery was disconnected. to test, try cleaning the contacts and see if there is any improvement, even unplugging and replugging it a few times may help test but the best cure really is to replace the main battery connector

I did think of that but then I'd have several inches of a looped wire to deal with. might still be worth it but would be much better and cleaner without it. I might just try it tonight if I get a chance, I can compare voltage in escribe to what I'll measure right at the cells, since there s really no load the voltage drop may be insignificant

bob ground is common for sure, I haven't checked it at the board level yet but the G pin on the balance connector may already be connected to ground. my main concern is with voltage drop to cells 1 & 2, the will both be getting there reference through a long thin wire where cell 3 would be a short jumper from term 3 to bat+, my concern is that cells 1 & 2 may have a certain amount of voltage drop through these longer leads, so showing 4.2 may actually be 4.23, where cell 3 won't have this same voltage drop, this may wind up giving 3 cells that are not truly balanced, cell # 3 may wind up at slightly less actual voltage because of the voltage drop to cells 1 & 2 through the longer leads

ok I've been trying to work with maximizing space within a mod to also fit a juice bottle for bottom feeding. the regular 4 prong balancing connector of a 3s pack takes a lot of space, what I have been doing is using a pair of tiny jst plugs instead, but what's obvious to me is that 2 of the 4 wires we're using are redundant. the ground is already at the board and the 3rd cell is also already at the board, both at the battery main connections, I build my own packs anyway so my question is, couldn't I just use 1 small jst for only the cell 1 & 2, and then jump the G to ground at the board and jump the #3 terminal to the battery + right at the board? this will cut down on the amount of wires sticking out of the pack and running to the board by 2 and also reduce the space I need for the balancing plug itself. if/when I want to charge a pack outside of the mod I could easily make a Y adapter that plugs into the single jst and the main deans connector, and the other end could be a conventional 3s charging plug? I honestly can't see any reason this wouldn't work other than the possibility of the 3rd cell circuit not having as much resistance as the 1 & 2 cells circuits because of the longer thin leads for cells 1 & 2, where 3 is right to the board. I really think it should work fine but figured asking here couldn't hurt

scoopy the dna200 won't work with only one cell, if it did then Bob would be golden, the 18650 is a very easy and compact way to power mods and I def see Bob's point and agree, I would also love to see a single 18650 dna60 myself tbh, but since I can't actually do anything about it I'm just trying to work with what we got, but I still agree 100% that a single cell lower power chip with escribe functionality would be the best bet for bottom feeders and would probably be an even bigger demand item than the dna200's overall I would think in the future we will see something like this, evolv sure isn't about going backwards so really I'd say it's just a matter of time, but really the dna200 is just about ready as a brand new product and the dna40 is still less than a year old, it'll probably be about a year before we actually see something like this, and I'm so spoiled right now with the 200 that I'm not willing to wait, so for now smaller lipo's are where it's at.

I've seen a lot of printed mods that never really do anything for me but that one looks really nice for some reason. is that your design?