Bad Cell, or bad connection?

[Conanthewarrior]

Hi everyone. 

My hotcig V1 has started to read cells that are OK as out of balance-now this happened on my V2 hotcig, and I realized that the pins on the balance connection needed raising, and this remedied the situation. 

I have been using my V1 set to run dual 18650's for quite a while now-I changed the settings to 2S and adjusted the WH's, and it has been working fine, until yesterday. 

Now, I know that I can probably sort this one myself-so I am going to. 

I have a image from device monitor to show you, on the DNA200 screen it is showing the battery as empty, even though they are fully charged, and device monitor is showing them going quite crazy. 

They are a fairly new set of 25R's specifically for this device, I do have other batteries to try, but I am thinking connection? 

I just wanted to clarify this is the likely cause before I bend the pins into place. 

Here is the Image:



As you can see, it is a bit all over the place-but the batteries are only ever so slightly out of balance-but with a multi meter they are reading at the same voltage. 

I also want to make sure, that this is not causing damage to the device, if it is a cell I will replace the set immediately, or if it is the pins I will raise them right now. 

Thanks everyone for your help, Conan. 

[VapingBad]

An easy check is swap the positions of the cells and see if the weak cell in EScribe is still cell 2, I think it will be and that would strongly point to a connection issue.

[Conanthewarrior]

OK thank you, I have swapped the cells, here are the results. 



It seems to still be there, so I guess it is a connection issue-time to gently tweak the pins and give them a clean, and raise them slightly into place, I found the pins on the Hotcigs to be quite temperamental, so I guess this is the issue. 

I will do that now, and report back how the device is working. 

Thank you for your help, Conan. 

[Conanthewarrior]

I wanted to add-will this potentially cause any damage to my device, 1 cell being read as slightly out of balance by the device? 

As, It is now displaying the battery bar and working perfectly, but when fired there is still a tiny bit of difference between cell 1 and cell 2. 
I am going to clean the device like I said, for now I have raised the pins, and the battery bar is now full and not displaying "Imbalanced battery" when I fire it. 

So, say the closest I could get, even after a clean and re position of the pins, was say a 0.05V max difference, would this in any way hurt the device? 

If not, I can live with that small of a difference if I CAN'T get them to read perfectly in balance. 

Thanks, Conan. 

[VapingBad]

It shouldn't harm your device it would just get less runtime.  The one thing I would be careful of is charging as if a connection problem is causing it to see a cell voltage lower than it really is it may keep trying to charge it after it's full, I don't know for sure as not had a device doing this to test, but I doubt it would be a safety issue as I believe the board will not give the cell more than 4.2 V.

[Conanthewarrior]

OK, that was pretty painless. 


I removed the cover, cleaned the insides and out, as soon as I opened it though I noticed that the screw to the left of the balance tap on the rear of the board was VERY loose, now I gather this is a stand off screw that makes a connection by the looks of it, I made sure it was secure when I put it back together. 

The batteries are now reading as balanced in Escribe. 

So, I know the issue now, and how to sort it-if it comes back soon I will give it a more thorough cleaning, but hopefully it is sorted now . 

[Conanthewarrior]

VapingBad said:

It shouldn't harm your device it would just get less runtime.  The one thing I would be careful of is charging as if a connection problem is causing it to see a cell voltage lower than it really is it may keep trying to charge it after it's full, I don't know for sure as not had a device doing this to test, but I doubt it would be a safety issue as I believe the board will not give the cell more than 4.2 V.

Ok thank you, If I am honest I use an external charger for my 18650 powered DNA200's, I use the built in charging on my Efusion and Hotcig V2.

I am honestly thinking about changing the chip into a different housing though, due to the connection issues, just need to find one I like, a simple silver box that takes dual 18650's would be nice, and it would be a very easy transplant to do, so I am really thinking about doing this as it would be my first DNA200 in a custom housing.