Chronicle of a Death Foretold: Can be the MSDS due to a faulty charger?(longish)

[fuchs]

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Last night I was working at the computer to make the most of the silence in the house. I had put the oldest of my M8 batteries to charge in its cradle, as it went dead at the end of a shoot earlier in the afternoon. About 5 minutes later, I noticed a high pitch but very low volume buzzing sound coming from the battery. It surprised me that the "charge" LED was already off, with only the "Power" LED lit on the charger. I was very surprised, because I was positively certain that that battery had gone exhausted some hours before. I touched it and there were no signs of abnormal heating, i.e. it felt at room temperature. I disconnected the charger, and put the battery in the camera shortly to see if there was any charge in it. The LCD on the top of the camera showed a fully charged battery icon. I took off that battery and never put it in the camera again.

I tested the battery that I was using in the camera (about 50-60 RAW images taken on that charge, so practically a full battery) putting it in the charger, and it did not produce any strange noises.

I diagnosed a faulty original battery.

Today in the morning, I pick up a new battery, and put it in the cradle to let it charging for the first cycle. Not more than 15 minutes after, the "Charge" LED went off and the buzzing sound came out again.

 

I tested the charger on a wall outlet and with the 12V DC car adapter. In both situations it buzzed with those batteries. Both batteries, even if charged just for a little time (as the "Charge" LED went off very quickly in their respective charging cycles) shown up as fully charged on the camera display.

 

I am fearing a faulty charger, and consequentely a wrongly "Charged" tagged battery. This can be enough to foul the camera's circuitry to think the battery is charged when it is not, leading to erratic behaviour. Short recoveries after a shutdown can be the same as when a cell phone battery dies and one switches it on again after a few minutes, drawing from the batt a little more juice. I do not know if the battery I am using right now (a third one that I charged 3 days ago) is fully charged or wrongly tagged as, and I am in the dawn of a camera lockup.

 

So:

-has anyone who experienced a camera lockup controlled the batteries charge independently from the camera's lcd?

 

-can anyone with a current/future lockup check their chargers behaviour? - the buzzing sound is very low volume, there's a chance that you will not hear it in the middle of a noisy diurnal environment-

 

-has anyone tried to recover from a lockup with a battery charged in a different charger?

 

Sorry for the -too- long post.

 

Best,

Ed

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[jaapv]

My first gen M8 did this and locked up afterwards, It was just before it was to be collected for the upgrade anyway, so I do not count it as a camera problem, as I did not even have time to replace the battery before the UPS guy appeared. I classified it as a charger problem. However, Leica told me to include battery and charger and replaced both. I have been saying all along that I think this sudden death syndrome is battery related.And yes- my charger produced a whining soft buzz.

[fuchs]

My first gen M8 did this and locked up afterwards, It was just before it was to be collected for the upgrade anyway, so I do not count it as a camera problem, as I did not even have time to replace the battery before the UPS guy appeared. I classified it as a charger problem. However, Leica told me to include battery and charger and replaced both. I have been saying all along that I think this sudden death syndrome is battery related.And yes- my charger produced a whining soft buzz.

 

Indeed Jaaa, I remember your post about the faulty charger. And it also did that low frying sound...

 

My camera is an early 2nd generation (28th December), originally with 1.09, now 1.092, and has never had a glitch. I have already told with my dealer, and a charger should be arriving anytime -I hope soon-.

 

Any others who experienced similar problems?

[Guest sirvine]

It would be amusing/irritating if the sudden failure problems were all related to faulty chargers. I doubt many people have backup chargers to test this.

[okram]

I think last night my charger needed much longer time to charge.

Today I had my first lockup. Restarting the camera solved the problem.

I shot one frame after camera sleep, the camera freezed, and after restart the picture dissapeared.

I have two batteries....

 

 

M

[barjohn]

Those with two cameras should at least have a second charger. If one is failing, perhaps they could try on the other charger. Might be worth putting a meter to it and seeing what the charging voltage output is. It is certainly a possibility consistent with the faults we are seeing.

[fuchs]

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It may be due to batteries incorrectly tagged as charged by the cradle fouling camera's circuitry, or even damaging the electronics.

 

Or it may simply be a case of badly depleted batteries. As most people have only one charger, and if it is faulty it may be that after charging the battery, the charger shows it as fully charged, but the camera doesn't come back from the coma.

 

At least not until it is at Solms' ICU.

 

It should be of great help if there was a way to run the camera directly from an AC adapter (hopefully made by people different from those who made the chargers!)

 

BTW, What is the cameras operating voltage supposed to be? And the battery? How can I measure the remaining charge or the actual current (Ah) of a battery?

[marknorton]

The charger is only switched on when the battery is inserted and then, what's regulated is the current, not the voltage. The charger charges the battery at 0.75A which gradually reduces as the battery becomes charged until the charger is shut off once the current gets down to around 0.1A. The voltage across the battery is around 3.7 - 4.2 volts and the battery is rated at around 1900mAh.

 

The charger works using a PWM technique where energy is pulsed in to an inductor/capacitor network and then released out into the battery. The charging current is chanrged by changing the mark-space ratio of the gate signal to an FET which is either switched on or off. This increases the efficiency and reduces heat dissipation.

 

The charger will buzz if the inductor (see my travel charger thread) is not tied down the the circuit board with a liberal amount of glue; a noisy mains (household current) supply can also cause audible noise from the inductors on the high voltage side of the charger.

 

As for whether the battery is causing the shutdown, when the battery is charged, there's a temperature sensor to feedback the battery temperature. When in use, batteries are operated within a tightly defined safe area of operation because Li-Ion batteries will provide very high currents (with accompanying heat, smoke and light) and it may be the area of operation of the camera is overly protective and not flexible enough to take account of real world variations.

 

There's a fourth connection on the battery pack which is not used when the battery is charged and I'm not willing to sacrifice a real battery pack to see what it's for. I've just bought one of the aftermarket ones which will come under my scalpel when it arrives.

[jaapv]

It was not a 50 Hz buzz, Mark, more like a whine.

[Guest V64]

If the Battery overheats (and the LED starts flashing) can this cause the charger to stop charging - and indicate that the battery is fully charged?

 

I recall it took me three charging sessions to complete the first charge on a new battery - the first two ended shortly after the overheat LED started flashing. If I hadn't been watching, and had simply left it for 3 hrs. I would not have had any indication that the charge had been (prematurely) terminated.

 

David

[marknorton]

Who said anything aboutn 50Hz? A charger like this has a switched mode power supply which consists of an oscillator on the high voltage side, a small transformer and rectifiers on the low voltage side. The whining could be coming from the transformer which will be running at several kHz - they tend to make a noise when the supply is overloaded and the quality of the waveforms gets distorted..

 

I haven't seen any of these problems, even with all my probing around and butchery of the charger... Both my chargers (an original untouched one and my travel charger) and 4 batteries behave identically.

[gravastar]

My charger has some worrysome quirks. I have several batteries and all at some time have shown odd behaviour in the charger.

 

I can put a battery that's almost discharged in the charger and it won't charge. I have to remove and put it back several times before it will start to charge. At other times I can put in an almost fully charged battery and the yellow charge light will not go out for several hours. Other times the light will go out after about 5 mins with an almost fully charged battery. The net result of all this is I don't know if I can believe the state of the battery as indicated by the charger. In all cases the batteries were at room temperature.

 

I also have ordered one of the eBay batteries - to see how it functions and with the idea of possibly using it as an adapter for an external battery - I need a second camera base plate with an added connector port to do this.

 

Bob.

[eronald]

I sent the battery back with the M8. Maybe we should all do so.

 

Edmund

[scho]

When I first opened the box with my new M8 and saw the charger I thought - OMG, what kind of ancient technology is this? C'mon Leica you can do better than this bloated brick.

[robsteve]

When I first opened the box with my new M8 and saw the charger I thought - OMG, what kind of ancient technology is this? C'mon Leica you can do better than this bloated brick.

 

It may be big, but the 12v option is a bonus. Try doing that with a Canon charger. You need to carry a bulky inveter.

[scho]

It may be big, but the 12v option is a bonus. Try doing that with a Canon charger. You need to carry a bulky inveter.

I have absolutely no need for a 12v car charger. I'll take the compact travel size of a canon charger any day.

[james_h]

I seem to recall that the manual states to expect a slight buzzing sound although I can't see it now. If not then I may have heard it from Leica directly. Vague I know but certainly the DMR charger makes the same sound.

I can't imagine the chargers were tested prior to departure from Leica, they would probably have arranged for testing at source.

[fuchs]

Well, so far I have referred the whole charger question to my dealer, and a replacement is on its way.

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[robsteve]

I have absolutely no need for a 12v car charger. I'll take the compact travel size of a canon charger any day.

 

My 1D chargers are much heavier and maybe a bit bigger than the Leica DMR or M8 chargers.

 

I have used the 12v option quite often. It is very handy when travelling to charge in the car while driving.

 

I have also used it for sporting events when I would take my exhausted battery back to the vehicle and put it on charge, just in case I need it. This is more of a problem in the cold where batteries exhaust much quicker when shooting an outdoor event.

[carstenw]

Is there anyone here who can put Eduardo in touch with someone at Leica? I think this is worth pursuing. Leica themselves have recently admitted that they have not yet been able to narrow down the source of this problem.

 

If this is indeed the cause, I think that Leica has been vindicated. The chargers are made by Ansmann, who clearly (see Mark's charger modification thread) do not have the same level of quality as Leica.