tuk
Registered
TL;DR
Away on business in India, brought my gear, battery went wonky, [user]RonR[/user] went out of his way to help me debug, new battery was sent on the third and got here tonight.
The Long Version
I'm in India for three months for work and since I'm this close to the Maldives, how could I not plan a dive trip? So being the paranoid guy I am (and having had bad experiences with rented equipment), one bag was clothes and the other was dive gear. I haven't made the trip to the Maldives yet but did hook up with Temple Adventues in Pondicherry for a not-quite-a-liveaboard weekend trip. After a failed computer in the Philippines, I bought a Cobalt 2 "as a backup" and this was the first chance I had to get it wet. Charged to 100% the night before, did two dives and... 43%?? Charged it up with a battery pack I carry (read as: paranoid) and did the last two of the day/night.
When I woke up in the morning, having left it on the charger all night, it was dead. Not "run out of battery" dead but plugged-into-the-boat-power-and-it-still-wouldn't-wake-up dead. Unfortunately I lent my actual spare to someone the day before because he didn't have a functioning computer. Since I didn't want to mess with his no fly time, I let him keep it the next day, swapped in an SPG and depth gauge, used my dive watch (great thing to learn to do, by the way) and dove really conservatively.
At some point after getting back to my apartment and getting it on power again, it woke up. I did some Googling and found lots of references to [user]RonR[/user] and the Cobalt. I signed up for an account here, sent him a direct message and he spent the next few days working through some debugging with me. After some back and forth and looping in Adan and Scott from Atomic and another engineer at Ocean Concepts (Elizabeth) everyone was pretty sure of two things: (1) diving with my new Cobalt wasn't safe and (2) it was a battery problem.
Sure enough, some cheapo allen wrenches and a metal file* later, I had the back door off and found a puffy battery. There wasn't a single sign of water entry so this was definitely not a design flaw with the Cobalt. Lithium batteries often get sad for no reason (they're quite moody) and when they get puffy, that's an indicator of Bad Things. Being in India means that shipping anything is an expensive PITA but within a couple days I had a shipping confirmation and 4.5 days later (timezones), I have my new battery installed and the Cobalt is happily charging away. I'm hoping to be back down to Pondicherry and swimming again this weekend. (I should probably let the folks at Temple know...)
Huge thanks to Adan, Scott, Elizatbeth and [user]RonR[/user] for helping out while on an extended stay in the third world!
* There's one thing that would have made life a lot easier and could have saved us quite a bit of time: metric allen heads on the battery compartment. The correct allen size is 3/32" but that's not a common size outside of the US. A metal file was needed to make a 2.5mm wrench a ~3/32" wrench.
Away on business in India, brought my gear, battery went wonky, [user]RonR[/user] went out of his way to help me debug, new battery was sent on the third and got here tonight.
The Long Version
I'm in India for three months for work and since I'm this close to the Maldives, how could I not plan a dive trip? So being the paranoid guy I am (and having had bad experiences with rented equipment), one bag was clothes and the other was dive gear. I haven't made the trip to the Maldives yet but did hook up with Temple Adventues in Pondicherry for a not-quite-a-liveaboard weekend trip. After a failed computer in the Philippines, I bought a Cobalt 2 "as a backup" and this was the first chance I had to get it wet. Charged to 100% the night before, did two dives and... 43%?? Charged it up with a battery pack I carry (read as: paranoid) and did the last two of the day/night.
When I woke up in the morning, having left it on the charger all night, it was dead. Not "run out of battery" dead but plugged-into-the-boat-power-and-it-still-wouldn't-wake-up dead. Unfortunately I lent my actual spare to someone the day before because he didn't have a functioning computer. Since I didn't want to mess with his no fly time, I let him keep it the next day, swapped in an SPG and depth gauge, used my dive watch (great thing to learn to do, by the way) and dove really conservatively.
At some point after getting back to my apartment and getting it on power again, it woke up. I did some Googling and found lots of references to [user]RonR[/user] and the Cobalt. I signed up for an account here, sent him a direct message and he spent the next few days working through some debugging with me. After some back and forth and looping in Adan and Scott from Atomic and another engineer at Ocean Concepts (Elizabeth) everyone was pretty sure of two things: (1) diving with my new Cobalt wasn't safe and (2) it was a battery problem.
Sure enough, some cheapo allen wrenches and a metal file* later, I had the back door off and found a puffy battery. There wasn't a single sign of water entry so this was definitely not a design flaw with the Cobalt. Lithium batteries often get sad for no reason (they're quite moody) and when they get puffy, that's an indicator of Bad Things. Being in India means that shipping anything is an expensive PITA but within a couple days I had a shipping confirmation and 4.5 days later (timezones), I have my new battery installed and the Cobalt is happily charging away. I'm hoping to be back down to Pondicherry and swimming again this weekend. (I should probably let the folks at Temple know...)
Huge thanks to Adan, Scott, Elizatbeth and [user]RonR[/user] for helping out while on an extended stay in the third world!
* There's one thing that would have made life a lot easier and could have saved us quite a bit of time: metric allen heads on the battery compartment. The correct allen size is 3/32" but that's not a common size outside of the US. A metal file was needed to make a 2.5mm wrench a ~3/32" wrench.
