Suunto Eon Steel/Core Transmitter/Pod Battery

[waja]

I bought a used Suunto Eon Steel/Core Transmitter/Pod. I then hooked it up to test with my Eon Core. Nothing. No signal at all. I opened up the Pod and pulled the battery. It read 3.60V. I then put the battery in and checked the voltage again. 2.37V. The seller had replaced the original battery with one from his LDS. It was not a good battery. So I went on Amazon to search for a better battery. I bought three different brands and tested each one. Here is the data for testing on 2/19/2019. The Installed time was 30 seconds after installing the battery. In the working cases, this voltage always fluctuated.

Lisun - Made in China
Date Code A 18 03 19 (March 19, 2018)
Voltage 3.60 - Installed 2.37V

Saft - Made in France
Date Code 18173A214 (June 22, 2018)
Voltage 3.61V - Installed 3.47-3.55V 30 seconds

XENO XL-050F - Made in Korea
Date Code TLA8-0518 (May, 2018)
Voltage 3.65V - Installed 3.54-3.61V

OmniCel - Made in China
Date Code JAN 18 JFB (JAN, 2018)
Voltage 3.64V - Installed 3.47-3.54V

 

[Diving Dubai]

This is a known problem. It's not the transmitter nor the compute but the batteries.

My LDS had similar issues with my Pods.

On further investigation (by them) it appears there is a huge counterfeit market for batteries (who would of thought) which are really convincing.

My understanding (I'm no expert) is that measuring the battery voltage on its own isn't a good guide. They (my LDS) built a load tester because as you saw the voltage can drop dramatically. They had a 30% failure rate of unsuitable batteries from different sources and brands.

Now they check each and every battery prior to installation and teh problem has "gone away" - I don't know what they do with the sub standard "new batteries" with regard to refunds or exchange.