Had a fantastic few days in Iceland courtesy of Lucy for a Christmas present and saw what we went went for, which was a spectacular display of Northern Lights.
More pictures of Iceland that we took are HERE.
The 30 minute Auroral Activity Forecast which I followed, proved to be an accurate indicator, link HERE.
I bought a Flowzone Cyclone 2.5 battery pack sprayer and I love it, however I did experience a battery issue and the company were superb in sending out a replacement.
The issue I experienced was that the battery power level only indicated a red flashing LED after being on charge overnight, the battery test is operated by pressing the orange battery symbol and all green LEDs should illuminate after changing.
I did offer to send the faulty battery back to the supplier but they were happy for me to dispose of it, so I thought I’d open it up to see what’s inside.
A T10 x 50mm Torx security screwdriver was perfect to remove the four securing screws, the screws aren’t security ones, but it was the only one I had in the right size.
A cool feature of the battery is that the low voltage charging transformer lead plugs directly into the rear of the battery, no external charger is needed.
The battery pack contains 5 li-ion rechargeable 3.7v type 18650 batteries, once charged the voltage per battery is 4v, testing each battery in turn, it soon became obvious which one had failed as its voltage was 0.37v and the end cap showed signs of discolouration, not sure what caused this, maybe the battery compartment door wasn’t double clicked closed and water got in, I don’t know, but I’m very careful to make sure everything is dry by the battery just in case.
Above picture shows removed dead battery and the new one in-situ, battery cell replacement was quite difficult as the cell connections were spot welded on, and cells were interconnected, fortunately it was the end cell that needed changing so I peeled off the spot welded tab and unsoldered the tab connections on the PCB and this gave me enough room to get the old one out and the new one in.
Once the new battery was in I used some liquid flux, tinned the tabs and cell connections to make the heat contact on the battery as quick as possible using my Weller 100w soldering gun.
Everything works which is a result, also I have 5 battery’s left over as I had to buy 3 lots of 2, pity they don’t sell them individually they cost £20.62 but I do now have a spare, so can’t complain 🙂
