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Little rubber button in Oregon battery compartment


gallet

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OK inside the battery compartment of the oregon 600 maybe others as well, there is a small rubber button. It does not touch the batteries and I am wondering if this is a switch that it meant to work with the Garmin rechargeable battery pack, which looks like two normal batteries strapped together. 

The  specs for the battery pack  seem to suggest that it is only for the GPS MAP 64 series and the Oregon 700 series. However I'm pretty sure this is for the Oregon 600 as well. I was wondering if anyone has a MAP 64 who can have a look inside the battery compartment and tell me if it also has the little rubber button in it. 

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, Team DEMP said:

Yes, the button is there to detect the rechargeable battery pack. You can put a thin piece of plastic across it and it should then allow the GPS to display the menu option to select the Garmin battery pack and recharge in the unit. Some people recommend charging outside of the unit.

If you use something to press the button down with your own batteries installed, no option will be displayed for battery type in the GPSr setup menu.

 

See 'Setup > System > AA Battery Type' here.

Edited by Atlas Cached
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2 hours ago, Atlas Cached said:
6 hours ago, Team DEMP said:

Yes, the button is there to detect the rechargeable battery pack. You can put a thin piece of plastic across it and it should then allow the GPS to display the menu option to select the Garmin battery pack and recharge in the unit. Some people recommend charging outside of the unit.

If you use something to press the button down with your own batteries installed, no option will be displayed for battery type in the GPSr setup menu.

 

See 'Setup > System > AA Battery Type' here.

Thanks for correcting my comment. I've run with the plastic piece since I got my Oregon so I haven't looked at the menu since. 

I used a stiff piece of plastic from the impossible to open packaging we get today. The plastic packaging might have been from the memory card that I got and used with the Oregon at the same time. 

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3 minutes ago, Team DEMP said:

Thanks for correcting my comment. I've run with the plastic piece since I got my Oregon so I haven't looked at the menu since. 

I used a stiff piece of plastic from the impossible to open packaging we get today. The plastic packaging might have been from the memory card that I got and used with the Oregon at the same time. 

That is exactly what I use, a small portion of the plastic packaging the uSD card came in! Plenty left over for next time if I need to replace it!

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OK thanks, it's been a struggle to get info from Garmin. I had some strange behaviour at first where after charging it would not turn on for a few minutes did this a couple of times but it's all back to normal now.

Got some Panasonic XX pro eneloops in now, but the battery indicator is a bit weird anyway. As you've pointed out there is not choice with the button down. Used it all day in my motorbike not plugged in with no screen illumination but it was redrawing most of the time. It started with 4 bars on the indicator, when the battery was at 1.45V, after an hour or so it went to 2 bars, bypassing 3 bars. Then it remained on 2 bars until it just cut out, it did not show one bar. I then plugged it into my bike 5W usb cable which is connected to the 12V battery with an inline fuse. By the time  I got home it was back up to 1.3V.

I'm going to leave it on the bike all night to see if the battery charging blinking light will stop blinking. I checked the bike battery voltage after bleeding off the static charge and it was 12.9V which is right because it's a new AGM battery. I used a Fluke 101 and I'm confident that it's an accurate reading. I'm wanting to see if depletes the battery to a measurable amount.

What I find when plugging it in is that at first it boots up, I turned the backlight off and switch the unit off and then the blinking battery indicator came on, with a very low backlight. I'm going to leave it like that all night and see what the voltage is on the AAs.

What I'm not sure about is that if I turn the unit off a second time while the charging indicator is blinking then the screen shuts off, I'm not sure if that means the unit is off and not accepting a charge or if it's in a battery saving mode and still charging but not displaying. As it is I turn it back on and it booted up, so I suspect that it shut off completely but I'm still not sure if it would charge like that. As it was I will leave it overnight blinking and then maybe do another test to see if it charges when completely switched off later.

 

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8 hours ago, Atlas Cached said:

When you turn it off completely, and no charging icon is visible on the screen, it is NOT charging.

OK thanks for that. Just to complete the report, when I checked the bike battery at first it was 13.1, after 20 secs with the headlights on it dropped to 12.9. Then with a further 20 seconds it remained at 12.9 so I'm confident this was the correct actual battery reading. 

The batteries themselves indicated 1.475V and the bike battery had dropped to 12.69 which was a bit of a worry as it means if you forget to turn it off then it's going to drain your batteries in a few days. However the light had turned itself to a higher brightness. I plugged it back in and it was still charging an hour later! So it obviously has a very unsophisticated charging circuit.

I'm going to test it all day today with it plugged in to the usb outlet and the screen on full brightness and see what it's like at the end of the day. 

At another time I will start with the batteries almost flat and take it out for a day ride with the screen on and see what the result is and report back here as a resource for others.

 

 

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14 hours ago, gallet said:

OK thanks for that. Just to complete the report, when I checked the bike battery at first it was 13.1, after 20 secs with the headlights on it dropped to 12.9. Then with a further 20 seconds it remained at 12.9 so I'm confident this was the correct actual battery reading. 

The batteries themselves indicated 1.475V and the bike battery had dropped to 12.69 which was a bit of a worry as it means if you forget to turn it off then it's going to drain your batteries in a few days. However the light had turned itself to a higher brightness. I plugged it back in and it was still charging an hour later! So it obviously has a very unsophisticated charging circuit.

I disagree.

See "Function > Power Sources" here.

14 hours ago, gallet said:

I'm going to test it all day today with it plugged in to the usb outlet and the screen on full brightness and see what it's like at the end of the day. 

At another time I will start with the batteries almost flat and take it out for a day ride with the screen on and see what the result is and report back here as a resource for others.

 

 

 

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21 hours ago, gallet said:

OK thanks for that. Just to complete the report, when I checked the bike battery at first it was 13.1, after 20 secs with the headlights on it dropped to 12.9. Then with a further 20 seconds it remained at 12.9 so I'm confident this was the correct actual battery reading. 

The batteries themselves indicated 1.475V and the bike battery had dropped to 12.69 which was a bit of a worry as it means if you forget to turn it off then it's going to drain your batteries in a few days.

12.69 is a fully charged, resting battery, so it had not drained at all.  The GPs would never drain the bike battery.

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10 hours ago, Atlas Cached said:

I disagree.

See "Function > Power Sources" here.

 

 

Not sure what you're disagreeing about?. Thanks for that link very useful, that is the sort of info I was hoping Garmin could supply.  However I note in the link you provided that it says it will charge with the power off! I guess I'm going to have to double check that because they are not clear if they mean with the screen blank or the indicator blinking. 

EDIT: I'm watching the voltage under load with the light on full, it just dropped down to one green bar with the batteries reading 1.23 and 1.24, going to see how low it goes when it hits the red bar, then I'll drive around with it with the light on full power and see how it charges. Will report back.

 

 

3 hours ago, Red90 said:

12.69 is a fully charged, resting battery, so it had not drained at all.  The GPs would never drain the bike battery.

 

12.7 would be for a flooded lead acid battery. A fully charge AGM can be anywhere from 12.7 to 13.1, 12.9 is pretty common these days.

To say that something that is drawing power will never drain a battery, doesn't make any sense.

 

 

Edited by gallet
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9 hours ago, gallet said:

 

Not sure what you're disagreeing about?. Thanks for that link very useful, that is the sort of info I was hoping Garmin could supply.  However I note in the link you provided that it says it will charge with the power off! I guess I'm going to have to double check that because they are not clear if they mean with the screen blank or the indicator blinking. 

 

 

It seems clear to me that the 'Charging with power off' refers to when the GPS functions are powered off, but the charge indicator is still present.

Edited by Atlas Cached
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19 hours ago, Atlas Cached said:

It seems clear to me that the 'Charging with power off' refers to when the GPS functions are powered off, but the charge indicator is still present.

Yeah, I'd reckon that's almost certain. I'll check anyway just for the sake of completeness. Ya never know. Sort of like the way that neutrinos violate parity. Parity that was such an established obvious concept that nobody bothered to check neutrinos until Yang and Lee conjectured that the neutrino did violate parity and lo and behold Madame Wu found it to be true, not that she shared the Nobel prize.

Anyhoo for the sake of completeness I submit my latest testing. Went out for a 2 1/2 hour ride on the motorbike today began with the Panasonic Pro eneloops flat and reading 1.15V, had them plugged into the bike usb socket with the maps updating and the screen on full brightness, when I got back the batteries were showing 4 bars and the voltage was 1.345 or 1.29V under load. So that's pretty good for just 2.5 hours. Considering it's supposed to be 16hrs to charge from power, maybe it's because they draw more than 500mAh which is what a computer supplies. The usb socket on my bike can supply up to 2.1A so I guess it's possible that the Oregon can draw 1A. I'd like to find out. 

The one last thing I need to check now is to make sure the backlight is set to off when the Oregon is powered and then see if when the charging indicator stops blinking that it returns to off, or if it remains very dim as it does when it's charging. As it was I didn't do that when I charged it last time and although it was dim when it was blinking and charging, it returned to full brightness with the charge indicator not blinking! Which resulted in a considerable drain on the bike battery, from 12.9 to 12.69 which could flatten the batter in maybe 5 days. Which is suppose is about right because if it's drawing say 300mA for 10 hours then that's 3Ah and the bike battery is only 11Ah. 

 

Edited by gallet
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3 hours ago, Team DEMP said:

You shouldn't need any brightness on unless you are using the device in the dark. In daylight, the screen is bright without any backlight. 

Yeah, I just wanted to test how the Oregon would charge flat batteries connected to my motorbike while it was also under heaving load. Turns out to be pretty darn good. 2.5 hours charging and I've taken it out today and it's still on 4 bars. I'm now wondering how many mAh the Oregon draws from an outlet that can supply 2.1A

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On 04/09/2017 at 0:46 AM, Atlas Cached said:

You mean mA, not mAh, right?

Yes, that is what I meant. Update I turned the display illumination off both when powered by batteries and when powered by usb. I then left it to charge all night when the batteries were already almost full so that it would stop charging quickly and I could see if the light stayed off when it finished. It did.  So I thought that was good, should hardly  use any power however when I checked after a night of charging it still drained my bike battery a significant amount. from 12.9 to 12.75, while not as bad as going down to 12.69, that is still enough of a voltage drop to flatten a 10Ah bike battery in a week. So that is something to be aware of. 

I hope that someone finds the information in this thread useful in the future. 

 

 

 

Edited by gallet
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