R30 Battery issues

[bearcatrp]

Went to charge the R30. Put it in the cradle. Finished with the green light. Turned it on. Only 57%. Put just the battery in the cradle. Green light came on after a bit. Put it in the R30 to check the charge. Shows 100% but got a message the battery is low. Checked both manuals for any information. Didn’t find any. Am assuming the battery itself is bad. Is this correct?

 

[Whiskey3JMC]

How old is the R30/battery?

 

[buddrousa]

A better question is how many times has the battery been charged most batteries have a life of 300 to 500 charge cycles.
Rule of thumb if you charge your battery every day that is 1 and 1/2 years (18 Months).

 

[kruser]

Went to charge the R30. Put it in the cradle. Finished with the green light. Turned it on. Only 57%. Put just the battery in the cradle. Green light came on after a bit. Put it in the R30 to check the charge. Shows 100% but got a message the battery is low. Checked both manuals for any information. Didn’t find any. Am assuming the battery itself is bad. Is this correct?

Let the battery power your R30 until it gets low and shuts down.
Leave the R30 off.
Then place your R30 with the suspect battery into the DROP-IN charger only to recharge it.
Make sure you let it charge fully until the charge LED indicator turns green before you turn the radio back on.
These steps will restore the batteries correct condition to the R30 and your error should go away.

The R30 appears to get out of sync with what the battery reports to the radio as far as the charge level goes cycles and then it displays the message you see.
As far as I can tell, this comes from use of using the USB method to recharge the R30 battery. I know several users have had the same problem, including myself several times, and the fix above does work.
One of my R30 batteries reports 325 charge cycles but it still works great. Only problem was when it would get out of sync like your R30 battery appears to have done.

 

[bearcatrp]

Run it low or until it shuts off the radio? I’ll check how many cycles it has. Not sure how old. This is a used one I bought for a backup couple years ago. Sits in my closet. I check it periodically to see if I need to charge it.

 

[DudleyG]

Run the receiver until the battery is completely dead and the receiver turns off. Try to watch for when the receiver turns off and put the battery/receiver in the desktop charger pretty soon after the receiver turns off. Don't let the receiver sit for days with a completely dead battery. It should take around 6 to 7 hours to completely recharge. This procedure is called calibrating the battery.

If you want to run the battery down fast, tune in a strong FM broadcast station.

 

[bearcatrp]

Battery has 26 cycles. Running it now.

 

[aprilexe]

This (or something similar) was reported on older firmware versions.

Here is the 1.13 US version R30 1.13 USA

 

[bearcatrp]

Didn’t even think about checking the firmware when I bought it. It’s on the original version. Will update this soon. Thanks for pointing this out.

 

[bearcatrp]

If that message disappears after I upgrade the firmware, should I still run the battery down to calibrate it?

 

[buddrousa]

It should not hurt to deep cycle the battery.

 

[kruser]

If that message disappears after I upgrade the firmware, should I still run the battery down to calibrate it?

Yes. It shouldn't do it often however.
I never saw the error very frequently myself and I haven't seen the error at all since I've been using the drop in charger only,
It never popped up enough for me to be concerned about it once I learned the cause and fix.

This (or something similar) was reported on older firmware versions.

Here is the 1.13 US version R30 1.13 USA

I've seen this with all FW versions and I've never seen it mentioned in any FW change-logs so who knows if it was fixed. I'd say it wasn't myself.

 

[aprilexe]

It was this bit in the change log from 1.11….
“Changes from Version 1.11
Battery health status (Normal/Caution/Warning) judgment has been improved.”

I do notice that as the second full battery sits next to the cradle ready to change out it has lost a bit of charge by the time I swap it but I think that’s pretty normal for l-ion , nicads etc.

 

[bearcatrp]

Update done. Message disappeared. Will run it out thought. Turned back light on constant so it will help drain the battery. Thanks again folks for the help.