Battery Degradation

[oper1206]

First time poster and still learning so be gentle. We currently use the APX6000 radios with the Impress 2 batteries (PMMN4485A & PMMN4486). My personnel that are using the radios are getting what I call a bonk sound when they transmit and no one can seem to figure out why. They are guessing either battery degradation or they need to be realigned. I was told that if the battery degrades below 80% it will/could affect radio transmissions. Also told that we should be replacing batteries every 2 years.

1) Any truth to the degradation affecting radio transmissions?
2) At what point of degradation should the batteries be replaced?

I would appreciate any insight you can provide. I just want to make sure it's not a money grab we are getting suckered into

 

[KE4ZNR]

I would definitely lean towards alignment before batteries though you want to be on top of both situations.
Alignment is crucial if you are on a P25 system and having a reference oscillator being just a couple hundred Hz off center can cause PTT denied symptoms like what you are seeing.
Batteries *can* last you a little longer than 2 years with proper conditioning.
So alignment first then look at the date codes on your batteries.
(source: I help manage a fleet of 600+ APX 6000s and 300+ APX 6000XEs and many other Motorola radios.

 

[oper1206]

Thank you for the input!

I went through the batteries that we have and they range from 2015 through 2024. I was shocked needless to say that we had some that old. Unfortunately we don't have one of those charge banks that shows the capacity. At what capacity should we be replacing?

Can you point me in a direction of the simplest instructions for battery conditioning? I work a lot of technologically inept people

 

[K2NEC]

What kind of system do you use these radios on? Is it conventional or trunking? If you are on trunking, is it possible the system is just crowded and resulting in denies?

While it's possible it's a battery issue, i'd sooner lean towards a radio issue

 

[oper1206]

trunked. I have reached out to the radio shop to find out if they did an alignment when they did out firmware updates in February. The guys were complaining about the bonking out so that's what prompted me to get them updated. However, they still bonk out just not as frequently.

I only have at most 10 people using our 1 radio channel at a time during the summer months and in the winter I have 2. During an active conversation I understand the denies, but when nothing is going on and it happens out of the blue that is where we are running into problems

 

[KE4ZNR]

Thank you for the input!

I went through the batteries that we have and they range from 2015 through 2024. I was shocked needless to say that we had some that old. Unfortunately we don't have one of those charge banks that shows the capacity. At what capacity should we be replacing?

Can you point me in a direction of the simplest instructions for battery conditioning? I work a lot of technologically inept people

Here is a good guide

Basically if you have an impres battery/charging system you will see 3 colors:
--Green: fully charged
--Yellow: (some people call it orange) Battery being conditioned
--Red: Battery charging.
If you place an Ipres battery into an impres charger and see yellow/orange leave it alone and let it do its conditioning thing.
It will eventually go from Yellow->Red->Green.
A mistake is to remove the battery when yellow conditioning is seen and immediately place it back down in the charger which will change from yellow to red (it will eliminate conditioning mode and switch to charging mode). It will charge quicker but will shorten the batteries overall life.

I still maintain your biggest issue at the moment is getting your radios aligned in a shop environment. In our shop we use Viavi/Aeroflex 3920 test sets that can align an APX Portable radio in about 8 mins or less.
Once your radios have been aligned I can almost guarantee that your users will see less "bonks" on xmit.

 

[oper1206]

How often should you be conditioning the batteries?
Second question - does it hurt the battery life leaving it on the charger consistently while not being used?


Perfect! I am reaching out to the shop today to get some answers. Crossing my fingers that is the issue! I really appreciate all of your help!

 

[MTS2000des]

https://www.motorolasolutions.com/content/dam/msi/docs/products/two-way-radio-accessories/batteries/brochures/motorola_solutions_battery_care_tips.pdf

 

[nokones]

You should be using the Motorola Impress Charger unit with the display for your Impress batteries. The charger and battery will communicate with each other and the battery will be reconditioned automatically when it needs it, usually every 30 days. If the battery is in the charger it will always display the battery capacity after the charged cycle.

If you use the Impress Charger to maintain/exercise/charge your Impress batteries, you should see approx. 10 years or more of good battery service life. In a Public Safety environment, dispose/replace the battery when the reconditioned capacity dips below 80%.

I have two Motorola Impress batteries I use with my XTS series radios, one is 8 years old and one is 11 years old. The 8 year old battery is showing 106% and the 11 year old is showing 92% and it's been almost a month since the last exercised cycle.

Unfortunately, I can no longer buy Motorola Impress Batteries for my XTS 5000 series radios. However, there are after-market suppliers that still sell Impress smart batteries. I have several of them that are 2 years old now and they were just exercised at 115% with one that dipped to 114%.

They came new at 115%. It'll be interesting to see the length of service life I get with these 4400mah batteries for the years to come.

 

[oper1206]

What kind of system do you use these radios on? Is it conventional or trunking? If you are on trunking, is it possible the system is just crowded and resulting in denies?

While it's possible it's a battery issue, i'd sooner lean towards a radio issue

I reached out to the radio shop and they did the alignment with the last firmware update. So I am at a loss

 

[N4KVE]

Here is a good guide
A mistake is to remove the battery when yellow conditioning is seen and immediately place it back down in the charger which will change from yellow to red (it will eliminate conditioning mode and switch to charging mode). It will charge quicker but will shorten the batteries overall life.

While this is definitely great advice, sometimes we don’t have 8 hours to wait for a proper recondition/charge cycle, so the battery gets removed, & popped back in the charger to force a red light.

 

[KE4ZNR]

While this is definitely great advice, sometimes we don’t have 8 hours to wait for a proper recondition/charge cycle, so the battery gets removed, & popped back in the charger to force a red light.

Then don't ***** at me when your battery won't last a full shift because you caused your own headaches.
This is also why departments SHOULD purchase more than one battery for each radio/user.

 

[K2NEC]

If it's yellow, let it mellow!

 

[KE4ZNR]

I reached out to the radio shop and they did the alignment with the last firmware update. So I am at a loss

If the radio shop did indeed do an alignment then this might be a coverage issue. Have the users had xmitting issues in the same exact spots in the past like what they are reporting now?
Different times of year affects our city/county radio system with propagation and the like.
Lots of variables in play that could be the answer here.

 

[16b]

I only have at most 10 people using our 1 radio channel at a time during the summer months and in the winter I have 2. During an active conversation I understand the denies, but when nothing is going on and it happens out of the blue that is where we are running into problems

If you are on a trunked system, the concern is not how many people are using your particular channel, the concern is the overall load on the system (or site) from other users. Without getting into a ton of detail on how trunked systems work, you do not have a dedicated "talk path" (frequency) for your group of users; the talk paths are shared among all of users on the system. If all of the frequencies on the system are in use when you try to talk, you would be denied. Although I do not have any first hand experience administering a trunked radio system, I would imagine that the system keeps a log of all denials, including busies, so in theory the radio system administrators could check the logs and see if your users' radios are getting busied out. For this line of investigation it would probably help to make note of specific days and times when the "bonks" occur. Of course looking into this will depend on the willingness of the radio shop and/or system administrators to help.

 

[nd5y]

Poor coverage can be cause by the users doing stupid stuff like wearing the radio on their belt and using the antenna for speaker-mic coiled cord storage.

 

[oper1206]

If the radio shop did indeed do an alignment then this might be a coverage issue. Have the users had xmitting issues in the same exact spots in the past like what they are reporting now?
Different times of year affects our city/county radio system with propagation and the like.
Lots of variables in play that could be the answer here.

This started at the beginning of last year. Since they came and did the alignment it's gotten better, but still happens. It's nothing we can't deal with, but annoying at the same time.

I am trying to make sure that all current users have newer batteries. It may be something we just have to deal with unfortunately

 

[oper1206]

Poor coverage can be cause by the users doing stupid stuff like wearing the radio on their belt and using the antenna for speaker-mic coiled cord storage.

Yep! Trying to break stupid habits!

 

[nokones]

While this is definitely great advice, sometimes we don’t have 8 hours to wait for a proper recondition/charge cycle, so the battery gets removed, & popped back in the charger to force a red light.

It takes longer than 8 hours to exercise/condition a battery. The exercise cycling rate is approx. 1 hours per each 100 mah of remaining battery capacity thus, if the battery has 3200 mah of remaining capacity, it will take approx 32 hours of cycling through the 3 cycles of exercising/conditioning.

 

[GTR8000]

It takes longer than 8 hours to exercise/condition a battery. The exercise cycling rate is approx. 1 hours per each 100 mah of remaining battery capacity thus, if the battery has 3200 mah of remaining capacity, it will take approx 32 hours of cycling through the 3 cycles of exercising/conditioning.

Where on earth did you get the idea that an IMPRES battery goes through 3 cycles of re-calibration??? And no, it would not take 32 hours to cycle through a 3200 mAh battery, that's insane. I've put 5400 mAh APX batteries on an IMPRES charger, and they were done in under 12 hours.

By the way, I hate to burst everyone's bubble, but there is no such thing as "reconditioning" lithium based batteries (Li-ion, LiPo, etc.), I don't care what MSI calls it. These are not old ass NiCd cells that developed a "memory". Every charge/discharge cycle reduces the usable life of the battery to some degree, and yes that absolutely includes the so-called "recondition" cycle, which is merely deep discharging the cells, followed by a full top off. The actual point of the IMPRES cycle every 30 days is to re-calibrate the usable capacity of the battery. That's why the battery icon will no longer appear on the radio's display if you go more than 30 days without allowing the charge to re-calibrate the capacity.