Edge Battery

[KarenG]

what's the deal with the damn battery life?????????????????

i used it for an hour and change yesterday on my lunch ride, turned it off for the remainder of the day and updated the firmware last night. so, it was on for all of about, at most, 2hours. then, it sat hooked to the puter for a while last night before i went to bed and yes the puter was on and battery was "supposedly" charging.

unplugged it and left on coffee table overnight and all day today. come home this afternoon, get stuff ready to ride, and what?? the battery's dead????? WTF????

this is getting to be real annoying, as this happens all the time if i don't leave it plugged into the wall charger.

any ideas/thoughts/comments from other edge users??

K

[JayC]

I ordered a Mintyboost just for such occasions.

My battery life has been fine but Ive had the same thing happen to me as well if the unit gets itself into some wierd loop, it will just sit there and drain the battery. The culprit seems to be leaving it plugged into the PC instead of a wallcharger and the PC doing something wierd with the unit to cause it to drain and not actually charge.

[KarenG]

send me a link.

[JayC]

http://www.ladyada.net/make/mintyboost/

Its a kit.. you need some soldering skillz to put it together.

[KarenG]

http://www.ladyada.net/make/mintyboost/

Its a kit.. you need some soldering skillz to put it together.

sounds like i need to order myself one and employ you to "make" it for me :D

[JayC]

Haha.. sure.

I figure this will be handy to have just for situations like what happened to you.. not to mention extending the life of the battery for centurys.

[KarenG]

so, have you got it and used it yet? i'll go ahead and order one in the next coupla days..

[JayC]

No.. it just shipped today.

[RickF]

Rechargable lithium-ion batteries are better than NiCad or Ni metal hydride batteries, but all rechargable batteries have their limitations, and all of them have a finite number of times they can be recharged without losing the ability to hold a charge. I do not own an Edge, so I do not know what, if any, safeguards are built in to prevent overcharging, but I suspect that there are are none in the unit itself. There might be in the wall charger, but certainly not in the computer.

In general, lithium-ion batteries should be charged for about three to eight hours before use. If you charge them for less than about three hours, they will not be fully charged, but if you charge them for more than about eight hours you begin to shorten the life cycle of the battery significantly.

One of the design flaws of the Garmin products is that it does not appear that you can purchase replacement batteries separately. I do not like to buy products that have a "lifetime" rechargable battery, because I can guarantee you that the battery will be the first thing that will fail.

If your Edge is still under waranty, I would charge it for fours hours using the wall charger (there is too much variability from computer to computer using the USB charging option), then see how long it lasts. If it does not hold a charge for a week of no use or for eight hours of use, whichever comes first, I would send it back and have them replace it.

[CharleyM3]

Not to rub it in, but *that* is exactly why every battery operated thing I get runs on AA. I have a lot of NiMH AA batteries and 2 intelligent chargers. Next is a solar panel so that I can recharge anywhere.

[JayC]

Just finished up my Mintyboost battery pack kit for the Edge. Apparently it adds about 10 hours of run time to the Edge with just two AAs. Took me about 30 minutes to solder it all together and put it in it's case. Ill post some pictures when I bring my camera upstairs.

[KarenG]

well, musta been something to do with having it hooked to the computer. ive used it all week, using the puter to only download, then leaving it laying on the coffee table. im down to 2bars after todays ride.

seems to be ok...

[TracyW]

I think it says it's charging when plugged into the computer only because it registers something plugged in. If it truely is charging, I doubt that it is doing much.