APX Unknown Battery indicator

[ohio64thffemt]

I am sorry if this is already on here. I did a search but didn't find anything. I see now we are getting the Unknown battery indicator when using an off brand battery in our APX 6000 radio's. It was not doing this until we updated to enable the Bluetooth. Is there anyway to disable this and make it work in the programming?

 

[TXRXMD414]

we purchased 164 APX batteries as part of a total upgrade. The batteries came direct from Motorola. Of those 164, we found 6 that gave an incompatible battery indication. We found that in the lot of 164, some were made in China, some were made in Taiwan. Some had white labels with black writing, some had black labels with white writing. Some had blue dots, some had green, some had none.
End of the day, Motorola replaced all 164 batteries and could not pinpoint the reason for the inconsistencies. My guess is they (motorola) got screwed by some second rate manufacturers along the way.

 

[hitechRadio]

Since you updated to enable your Bluetooth. Your firmware likely was updated also. Which added the battery class designation, for FM, UL Div 1 and UL Div 2.

The idea behind this... is that you would be alerted to a incorrectly classified battery being installed on the radio when the radio is deployed in certain environments or conditions requiring those classifications. Such as explosive environments.

This feature can be disabled in CPS, however I am not sure if it can be changed if the radio is has been classified when shipped.

Use the latest CPS and go to radiowide>features and set radio certification to NONE

If you do NOT see this feature in your CPS you have an older version CPS, you will need the latest version.

See if that works!

Note: both of you state the radio says unknown battery or incompatible battery. I believe it actually displays wrong battery when I have enabled battery classification. So I could be wrong with the setting to NONE may not make a difference.

Good luck!

 

[ohio64thffemt]

Great thank you for all the great information. Hi-Tech I appreciate the info on the cps. I am going to go in and try that when I get the chance to. That was exactly the type of answer I was looking for.

 

[ohio64thffemt]

hitechRadio

I went and checked those radio wide settings. It is already set to NONE. Do you have any other suggestions?

 

[ohio64thffemt]

hitechRadio

I went and checked those radio wide settings. It is already set to NONE. Do you have any other suggestions?

 

[RodStrong]

Radios with newer firmware will briefly show "unknown battery" (on certain knockoff non-impres compatible batteries) and bonk when turned on. Radios with older firmware won't with the same batteries, and they will have what appears to be impres functionality.

 

[ohio64thffemt]

Rodstrong
Right but it never shows a battery level after all that. It wouldn't matter if it just did that then showed a level after but it never shows up.

 

[RodStrong]

Rodstrong
Right but it never shows a battery level after all that. It wouldn't matter if it just did that then showed a level after but it never shows up.

It won't show a battery level if the radio doesn't think the battery is impres compatible. For whatever reason, the BATT function and the gas gauge worked with some or all cheap knockoffs before a certain firmware update. Not sure which update it was, but I noticed it on a batch of 20 radios I bought which showed up with version 17 in them. A couple of Arrowmax and Power Products batteries I had no longer had impres functionality on the radios with the newer firmware, and the "unk battery" message and bonk showed up. I contacted my power products dealer about their advertised "smart" batteries no longer being smart, which at the time, they weren't aware of. I think they have since fixed the issue.

So if you want the gas gauge, get a real impres battery, or a power products battery with "IC" at the end of the model number. There may be some other knockoffs out there that work now as well, but I don't know what they are (if any).

Good luck.