IMPRES: Undefined LED status (blinking orange/green)

[buckyswider]

Hi all, I just took delivery of 20 XPR3500e. While charging all the batteries for initial deployment, three of the units are coming up with an LED status of blinking orange/green. I can't find what that means anywhere. Charger is a PMPN4174 if that makes a difference.

All went to reconditioning upon first charge (steady orange) as they should . 17 ended up solid green as they should. And yes, this is definitely orange/green, *not* red/green. I swapped the three outliers into different chargers- same result. I even swapped them into different radios- same result.

I reckon I have to contact my vendor and have these three replaced as "DOA", but I'd really like to figure out what this undocumented LED pattern is.

Thanks!

 

[K2NEC]

Orange/Green means the battery is fully charged but needs to be reconditioned and will likely do that upon insertion into the charger the next time.

 

[GTR8000]

 

[hitechRadio]

You can force calibration by removing and reinserting within a few seconds. LED should turn steady amber, let it run until steady green, to complete calibration..
Also, might look at bottom of charger, some had the LED status chart on the bottom.

 

[GTR8000]

I've only seen the alternating amber/green on APX IMPRES 2 chargers that have a recalibration on/off switch on the bottom of the charger. If you disable recalibration by turning that switch to the off position, eventually the battery will complain that it needs to be recalibrated, and you'll see that LED pattern.

What model batteries do you have?

I'm not too familiar with the XPR series batteries or chargers, so I'm surprised to hear that the charger is displaying that LED status, considering there are no IMPRES 2 batteries for that series. Oddly enough, MSI makes the PMPN4284A MUC which is IMPRES 2, however I don't believe any of the batteries it charges are available in IMPRES 2 versions yet (XPR series, APX 900/1000/4000).

 

[K2NEC]

I've only seen the alternating amber/green on APX IMPRES 2 chargers that have a recalibration on/off switch on the bottom of the charger. If you disable recalibration by turning that switch to the off position, eventually the battery will complain that it needs to be recalibrated, and you'll see that LED pattern.

What model batteries do you have?

I'm not too familiar with the XPR series batteries or chargers, so I'm surprised to hear that the charger is displaying that LED status, considering there are no IMPRES 2 batteries for that series. Oddly enough, MSI makes the PMPN4284A MUC which is IMPRES 2, however I don't believe any of the batteries it charges are available in IMPRES 2 versions yet (XPR series, APX 900/1000/4000).

My PMPN4527 does it as well. I assume it's because it's a newer XPR charger and it was implemented into them. No indication of it being Impres 2 though, so maybe that's something that will come in the future.

 

[n3obl]

My PMPN4527 does it as well. I assume it's because it's a newer XPR charger and it was implemented into them. No indication of it being Impres 2 though, so maybe that's something that will come in the future.

some the newer xpr chargers led color looks off. red looks like yellow.

 

[K2NEC]

some the newer xpr chargers led color looks off. red looks like yellow.

I promise you I'm not colorblind yet

 

[Tech21]

Probably not DOA, recalibrate/recondition and move on. The charger knows what it needs to do, let it do it's thing.

 

[buckyswider]

Thanks all! Sorry I took so long to rejoin- email notifications of replies aren't happening for some reason.

No recalibration switch nor LED legend on the bottom of the charger. First place I looked- we have many XTS/APX chargers that do have it. The orange/green is definitely not in the charger user manual either- where is that above legend from? And it's also not IMPRES2 (or at least the bottom of the charger doesn't reference it).

I'm not sure of the part # of the batteries- I will check when I got back down the firehouse in a bit. I will also try the reconditioning trick (which of course I'm familiar with due to our history of XTS and APX). I've never seen this syndrome before though- these definitely started out solid amber out of the box and into the charger, meaning they were reconditioning. Is this a somewhat normal condition??

 

[Tech21]

Thanks all! Sorry I took so long to rejoin- email notifications of replies aren't happening for some reason.

No recalibration switch nor LED legend on the bottom of the charger. First place I looked- we have many XTS/APX chargers that do have it. The orange/green is definitely not in the charger user manual either- where is that above legend from? And it's also not IMPRES2 (or at least the bottom of the charger doesn't reference it).

I'm not sure of the part # of the batteries- I will check when I got back down the firehouse in a bit. I will also try the reconditioning trick (which of course I'm familiar with due to our history of XTS and APX). I've never seen this syndrome before though- these definitely started out solid amber out of the box and into the charger, meaning they were reconditioning. Is this a somewhat normal condition??

Reconditioning isn't a trick or gimmick, it's something you should do at least once a month to keep your batteries in good condition and get max life out of them.

 

[GTR8000]

The orange/green is definitely not in the charger user manual either- where is that above legend from?

The legend I posted was from one of the newer APX IMPRES 2 chargers.

Reconditioning isn't a trick or gimmick, it's something you should do at least once a month to keep your batteries in good condition and get max life out of them.

Meh...it's technically just recalibrating the battery level so that it accurately reports the mAh capacity, not truly reconditioning it or "clearing memory" or anything like that from decades ago with NiCAD cells.

The plain fact is that lithium-ion and lithium-ion polymer cells lose capacity over time the more frequently they are discharged/charged, especially when they are discharged to a very low capacity then charged back up to 100%. Guess what that monthly IMPRES recalibration does? So yeah, normal use and charging is already counting against the ultimate life and capacity of the cell, and the recalibration just adds one more full cycle to that per month at the minimum. But make no mistake, there is no benefit whatsoever to the so-called "reconditioning" process, it's just an old term from decades ago with Ni-Cad cells that Motorola still uses.

Btw, the sweet spot for lithium based cells is between 20% and 80% of their capacity. Charge them before they are fully drained, and if you don't need to charge them all the way up to 100%, don't. That's more applicable to cell phones than it is public safety radios, but it's worth noting anyway.

 

[buckyswider]

Thanks. Good 'ol Motorola with improper documentation!

I did put the three suspects into recal/recon mode last night. They all went orange as expected. Within a few hours though two of 'em went to fast red blinking. Today, the one that didn't do that is solid green- so that one seems good. The other two were still in fast red blink, so I put them into recal/recon a third time. We'll see what they look like tomorrow...

 

[Tech21]

The legend I posted was from one of the newer APX IMPRES 2 chargers.


Meh...it's technically just recalibrating the battery level so that it accurately reports the mAh capacity, not truly reconditioning it or "clearing memory" or anything like that from decades ago with NiCAD cells.

The plain fact is that lithium-ion and lithium-ion polymer cells lose capacity over time the more frequently they are discharged/charged, especially when they are discharged to a very low capacity then charged back up to 100%. Guess what that monthly IMPRES recalibration does? So yeah, normal use and charging is already counting against the ultimate life and capacity of the cell, and the recalibration just adds one more full cycle to that per month at the minimum. But make no mistake, there is no benefit whatsoever to the so-called "reconditioning" process, it's just an old term from decades ago with Ni-Cad cells that Motorola still uses.

Btw, the sweet spot for lithium based cells is between 20% and 80% of their capacity. Charge them before they are fully drained, and if you don't need to charge them all the way up to 100%, don't. That's more applicable to cell phones than it is public safety radios, but it's worth noting anyway.

If it wasn't important, then the engineers who spent thousands of hours engineering those batteries wouldn't have even included it as something even the most basic charger does.

 

[GTR8000]

If it wasn't important, then the engineers who spent thousands of hours engineering those batteries wouldn't have even included it as something even the most basic charger does.

Do some research on lithium cells before forming an opinion about this. Cycling lithium batteries wears them down, period. Did you ever consider the possibility (probability) that MSI markets IMPRES technology as a selling point to discourage the use of aftermarket batteries, playing on old notions of batteries needing to be "reconditioned" to remove memory effect, which was common with nickel cadmium cells decades ago? Nah, a big corporation would never do anything like that!

Seriously, there is no "reconditioning" going on with IMPRES chargers, it's merely recalibrating the mAh capacity of the battery, which is why after a month or so without running the battery through that cycle, the radio will no longer display the battery icon.

There are so many well written and well researched studies on lithium ion batteries and the effect of charge/discharge cycles on them. The science is in, so take a few minute to read up on it and you just might be surprised at how pointless the IMPRES 30 day "recondition" cycle really is.

 

[buckyswider]

So only one of the three batteries when full green upon a second attempt at recal/recon. So two are bad and going back. Red blinky a 2nd and 3rd time.

And now that my own thread has come to its conclusion, time to hijack it. I too have been wondering about the effectiveness of IMPRES. We keep our radios on chargers in the apparatus to make sure they're always full. Jumped though a lot of hoops in 2005 when we went to XTS radios to get IMPRES batteries and chargers so we wouldn't have to replace batteries every two or three years like we did with the older batteries- allegedly the IMPRES system wouldn't overcharge and thus prolong the life. Well, turns out we have to replace batteries every two or three years anyway- only different being they cost 4x what the prior generation did. Well, I guess there is slight betterment- instead of knowing a battery needs replacement by having its charge last only a short time, now the charger tells us when a battery needs to be replaced. Replaced all the XTS with APX in 2019, and we've already gone through 6 battery replacements (out of about 35). So I've always had my suspicions about the efficacy of IMPRES....

 

[com501]

Lion batteries have a certain charge life maximum, I think it's around 1000 or so charge cycles. BMS inside the batteries determines the battery life.

 

[GTR8000]

IMPRES isn't a total waste of time and money. Having a pretty accurate accounting of the battery's mAh capacity is a good thing. The IMPRES chargers will not overcharge a battery, even if you leave it in the charger for months. I have observed some instances where if you leave a radio on in the charger (not really recommended practice), the charger won't trickle charge it as you would expect, and eventually it will discharge.

The downside is that MSI makes it so that a recalibration cycle is required every 30 days or so for the radio's battery gauge and battery info screen to display the correct info (or display at all, for that matter). Does 12 recalibration cycles a year really hurt the battery that much? No, not when you're essentially doing the same by letting the battery discharge normally a few times a week, then charging it back up to full capacity.

I've got some original IMPRES batteries that are nearly 10 years old and still have not triggered the end-of-life status. The IMPRES 2 batteries have a slightly higher capacity within the same sized shell, and they charge noticeably faster than the previous generation.

But at the end of the day, a wear cycle is a wear cycle is a wear cycle when it comes to lithium batteries. There is no magic to it, you can't cheat physics.

 

[buckyswider]

I think I finally figured this out!!

 

[iowajm780]

I think I finally figured this out!!

Very funny! Going to show this to our radio service folks.