What'cha gonna do?

What can I do? My battery died in my Neta 980. I can't find a cheap one on eBay or elsewhere. I think it is the same battery as the Airpanel v100, but can't find one of those either.

So my only option is to rebuild it. But the problem turns out to be the printed circuit board in the battery itself is bad. Now I'm really in deep stuff. That only leaves me one option...I have to turn the battery case into something that will hold 18650 cells that can be charged externally.

Luckily, external chargers are cheap these days. I got mine on eBay.

It came with 2 batteries and the charger for only $7. I bought 2 units as the Neta takes 4 cells. I plugged them in, they took a full charge, and my Neta is now working on batteries again.

Not the best method, but a workable one...and maybe someday I'll come across a battery I can charge from within the unit.





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Well done, Rich. When I was using my Psion Osaris, which had a gruesome battery bug (suddenly saying "no main batteries available" ), i built a battery pack from a closable shell at Radio Shack. It had a jack wire already built in, and the head was removable so you could buy the right-sized, polar-specific head for your machine.

Might help, since it comes with a lid.

Jake

Edited by Jake 2010-10-02 3:01 PM

I had thought about something like that...just a standard battery enclosure with a wire that would plug into the a/c jack on the tablet...but wanted to keep it a single unit without wires and such.

So I just cut the battery pack in half and removed the contents. Then using the existing connector, ran wires to the negative and positive ends of my 18650s, and with 4 of them in serial configuration, it works fine. I then just close up the halves of the battery pack, currently holding them together with a simple strip of plastic electrical tape.

Maybe later I'll figure out some type of permanent hinge to put on the outside edge since the table shell itself will hold the inner edges together.





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I tried rebuilding one of my Airpanel/ViewPad batteries too, and had the same problem. Your solution may be the only option as every Airpanel/ViewPad I've seen online lately has a weak battery.

Okay, I think I may have found a new solution to an old problem...my damaged Neta 980 battery. As you can see from the posts above, I've been charging the batteries in an external charger and then inserting them into the case. I think I found something that will allow me to charge the batteries within the unit like they used to.

Anyways, I ordered it all here: http://www.batteryjunction.com/pcb-14v-6a-leads.html

I'll let you know how I come out later after I get it and figure out how to put it all together. The whole board is only 1.6cm wide and 5 cm long, so it should fit inside the battery case.









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Okay, got the voltage regulator in and installed on the battery pack. I can now charge all 4 batteries simultaneously. However, there is a caveat...

Apparently the Neta 980 used some of the bias/feedback of the battery pack to tell the unit the battery status and condition. Since I removed those contacts, those signals are no longer apparent. Those are the 2-5 battery contacts within the cell itself.

So I can charge the unit, but it always thinks the batteries are dangerously low and about to run out of juice. Still it has been a successful experiment as far as it goes. Now I can charge the batteries and use it as normal if I don't mind that pesky little error about low batteries.

Maybe I'll just go to the Viewsonic website and order the extended battery since they don't have any regular size ones left any more....





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batteryregulator.jpg (58KB - 1 downloads)