Oregon 450 batteries suddenly drain fast

[+terratin]

Hi all,

 

I know that the Oregon 450 uses quite a bit of battery power. Still I could usually cache quite long on one set of batteries. Recently it seems like the batteries (eneloops, charger tells me they are still good) drain far too quickly. We did 5 caches along a 5km cycle route yesterday. When I switched on the GPS I still had two bars. The first cache was a Chirp, so I enabled that function and searched for 5 minutes, then switched it off again. Only had 1 bar left. Before the last cache I got messages that the batteries need replacement. Btw, I exchanged them on the previous, equally short caching trip!

 

Energy saving is on, light off, all I don't need off (chirp, Wherigo), right type of battery selected, map detail: 'less'

I use the old Garmin European map

I only noticed a similar large drain before when using an open street map on 'most' detail (small roads only show on 'most' detail on the zoom lvl I need for driving by car) and light on max.

 

Will deleting unused maps bring back better battery life? What else could I do? Anyone noticed something similar?

 

Mrs. terratin

[+speakers-corner]

Try deactivating the maps you dont want to use instead of deleting them. Do you remove the GPX-Files of found Caches before you go out again?

[tr_s]

Check if also normal alkaline batteries drain quickly. A charger failure could have damaged your rechargeable cells.

 

If that's the case, it could be either a software fault/imperfection in the Oregon or unintended battery drain (often caused by faulty input capacitors on the circuit board).

[+terratin]

Try deactivating the maps you dont want to use instead of deleting them. Do you remove the GPX-Files of found Caches before you go out again?

 

Hmm.. actually I need to check if I disabled the maps at all. Maybe that's the reason. Do they drain energy when they are activated but not used? These maps (part of Turkey, Faroer) are not covered by the European map. But I'm not in that area either anymore.

 

Yes, apart from the maps I always tidy up my gps: delete caches and waypoints, tracks, and routes if used.

[+terratin]

Check if also normal alkaline batteries drain quickly. A charger failure could have damaged your rechargeable cells.

 

If that's the case, it could be either a software fault/imperfection in the Oregon or unintended battery drain (often caused by faulty input capacitors on the circuit board).

 

Hmm.. we have other things we run on those batteries: a vista hcx, digital camera and a few other things. The batteries last long as they're supposed to do. They only drain quickly in the Oregon.

[tr_s]

Check if also normal alkaline batteries drain quickly. A charger failure could have damaged your rechargeable cells.

 

If that's the case, it could be either a software fault/imperfection in the Oregon or unintended battery drain (often caused by faulty input capacitors on the circuit board).

 

Hmm.. we have other things we run on those batteries: a vista hcx, digital camera and a few other things. The batteries last long as they're supposed to do. They only drain quickly in the Oregon.

 

Okay. Then you should probably look to the Oregon as the source of error. A battery may be damaged in such a way that it only drains quickly in a certain load condition (specific type of device), but that's rare.

[+splashy]

Current used by Oregon 550T

 

No backlight 180 mA

Bax Backlight 240 mA

 

Maybe a faulty Sd??

[+larryc43230]

I know you mentioned that you turned off Chirp, but I've learned, the hard way, that accidentally leaving that function on can drain the batteries faster than just about anything else. Be sure to double-check that setting the next time you notice fast battery drain.

 

--Larry

[+Mineral2]

do you know how long they're lasting starting fully charged? Mine seem to drop fast once the indicator gets down to 2 bars, but it takes a while to get there (~6-7 hours on 3-4 bars, and then ~3 hours on 1-2 for the eneloops).

[+phlatlander]

If you are normally using Eneloops and if your charger can "refresh" then I suggest you try that. I noticed quite a change in performance when I refreshed my older Eneloops. I only use Eneloop 2000mAh & 2500mAh in my Oregon 550 and Canon camera.

[+Kalkendotters]

Also: check the settings for the battery-type. If it is wrong, the GPS will not show accurate battery-bars.

For eneloops it should be set to NiMH