Oceanic GEO eating batteries

[onefastpony]

Just got a GEO from a guy off of Ebay who said that he has only used the computer for four dives. When I got the Geo yesterday, 10/26/09, the battery needed replacing. Not really a big deal since it came with two spares. I changed the battery less than 24 hours ago and i now have a change batt prompt on the computer, what is the deal!!! Please help, I am leaving on vacation tommorow and was planning on using the geo while diving and letting my wife use the veo 180nx.

 

[onefastpony]

Is my geo screwed up, now it does not have the prompt the change the batt, gggrrrrrr.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

How fresh were the included spare batteries? (I suspect you don't know.)

I wouldn't conclude that the Geo is a dysfunctional battery-eater until I tried a fresh, good quality (Sony, Varta, Duracell) battery in it.

 

[tgsmith]

it might not be the battery. I don't know about the GEO, but with my Veo250 it will display a low battery for the first few minutes after startup(sometimes, not always).

Go turn it on, play around with it and get familiar with it, then see if it still displays a low battery.

 

[300bar]

Off ebay,wonder why it was there.

 

[onefastpony]

the new battery that I put in was a Sony batt, but I have no clue as to how old the batt was.

 

[D_B]

I'm not sure this is your problem, but the only battery brand recommended to be used in the other Oceanic dive computers are .. Sony and Panisonic
.. they are the only ones that can handle the momentary current draw, they are rated for "pulse duty"
I had this problem with my VEO200 and the factory rep here gave me the info on what brands, and other SB'ers here told me about pulse duty



Edit .. if they are sony then I'm not sure what it is, unless they are old ones

 

[onefastpony]

Just got off of the phone with Mark from Oceanic, by the way I called them first and the CS lady said that I would get a call back from a tech guy, was pretty fast, thirty minutes later was talking with Mark. Mark stated that sometimes when the computer gets a low batt it will become stuck on the change batt screen regardless if a new batt is installed or not. He said a quick way to fix it would be to pull out the batt and short out the connectors for the batt, he said that this would clear the full memory of the computer and I should have no problem afterword. I went to RadioShack to have the batt tested with a voltmeter before trying the above solution to actually see if it was the batt or not, the batt shoved 3.2 on the volt meter, the batt was good. I did the fix that mark said right there in RadioShack and it worked perfectly, no more change batt prompt.

 

[Bennero]

Did this clear off all dives in the memory?

 

[D_B]

Glad you seem to have fixed your problem

(the issue for the other batteries was not voltage, they all tested good, it was that they have too high of internal resistance and can not supply the momantary high current draw that the computer needs, the voltage drops momentaraly, causing the computer to see it as a low battery, or to shut down)