DR 1000S and fighting the urge to use profanity....

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by tjdean256

If it is a bug, why does it seem to be so sporadic? In other words why doesn't everyone have the problem?

Good question. There could be a specific condition that triggers it which we don't know about yet. Maybe if the battery is low when you do the 1.7 upgrade, and it starts up for the first time with the new driver and a low battery, it throws off the calibration? Maybe only if it's not plugged in and the battery is low... could be lots of things.

There may not even be a bug, that was never confirmed, just an assumption some of us were making based on observed behavior from a couple users.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by sarikan

After a couple of resets, the columns disappeared but the horizontal one remained (slightly). Now the device is on and it is charging, and ghosting columns seems to come back if no screen refreshes happen for a while

That's odd. They've said before that a low battery can cause a temporary "line out" error that should go away after a recharge. I've never heard of ghosting problems like that though, especially ones that show up without a refresh.

That sounds more like a hardware problem.

[sarikan]

Hi Shaggy,
I've done two full drains-recharges since then, and the device seems to work with 1.5 without no problems at all. All the ghosting is gone, and not coming back, even if I leave the device open.

I assume all the weird stuff is related to battery calibration and related code. I suspect that some components of the readers are different, and software updates are causing trouble with some devices like mine.
If it stays as it is, it is at least usable, and that's all I ask.

Kind regards
Seref

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by sarikan

Hi Shaggy,
I've done two full drains-recharges since then, and the device seems to work with 1.5 without no problems at all. All the ghosting is gone, and not coming back, even if I leave the device open.

I assume all the weird stuff is related to battery calibration and related code. I suspect that some components of the readers are different, and software updates are causing trouble with some devices like mine.
If it stays as it is, it is at least usable, and that's all I ask.

Kind regards
Seref

They've said that when the battery driver does change, it takes up to 5 full recharge cycles before it becomes calibrated correctly again. That might be why it took a little while for 1.5 to start behaving consistently. I don't think that was your problem with the 1.7 firmware though, I assume you went through several recharge cycles trying to figure out what the problem was.

Maybe there's some specific usage pattern with the 1.7 driver that interferes with the calibration routine? It's hard to tell though, they don't usually announce when that driver is being updated in the release notes. It comes from a third party vendor, and isn't something that they write themselves.

[kees]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

It comes from a third party vendor, and isn't something that they write themselves.

how do you know that?

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by kees

how do you know that?

It's been talked about on their forums before. The battery driver comes from the battery/IC supplier, whoever that is.

[sarikan]

Ok, another update, from sometime around the end of the fifth full charging process.
With the fifth charging cycle, the device started to act exactly as it used to, back when I first bought it. I assume in every firmware update, full charges and discharges up to five - six times is necessary for the battery drivers to work correctly.
For now, I'm staying with 1.5, and I hope this will be the last post I'm sending to this thread

Kind regards
Seref

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by sarikan

Ok, another update, from sometime around the end of the fifth full charging process.
With the fifth charging cycle, the device started to act exactly as it used to, back when I first bought it. I assume in every firmware update, full charges and discharges up to five - six times is necessary for the battery drivers to work correctly.
For now, I'm staying with 1.5, and I hope this will be the last post I'm sending to this thread

Kind regards
Seref

I think it's only necessary to do that when the driver gets updated. However, since they don't always advertise when the driver is updated, it's probably not a bad idea to treat it like it is and do the 5 full charge cycle process after each firmware update.

[KingDani]

one quick Q :
say, you do the five full charge cycles , and you put away your device for two or three weeks ( happened a couple of times due to heavy study on paper situations before to me ) , during which the battery would certainly drain off to a point that it would half an hour recharge before being able to show it's not dead for good , would this mean that the recharging another five times needed for it to behave correctly? or should it be done only once in the devices lifetime.
sorry for twisted form of questioning
cheers

[hanche]

Originally Posted by KingDani

say, you do the five full charge cycles , and you put away your device for two or three weeks ( happened a couple of times due to heavy study on paper situations before to me ) , during which the battery would certainly drain off to a point that it would half an hour recharge before being able to show it's not dead for good , would this mean that the recharging another five times needed for it to behave correctly? or should it be done only once in the devices lifetime.

I can't answer authoritatively, but when you need to do the charge cycle thing, the need will probably be quite obvious from erratic and suboptimal behaviour of the battery. Other than that, I gather that it is good to do at least one full drain/charge cycle once in a while (say, every month or three) to keep the calibration of the battery monitoring circuits in shape.

[sarikan]

once the device reaches a point where it can successfully report the correct battery level, the full charging cycles treatment is probably not necessary.
however, I suspect that in time the battery drivers go out of sync, and full drains/charges help to fix the problems.
so full cycles every once in a while does not sound so bad.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by sarikan

however, I suspect that in time the battery drivers go out of sync, and full drains/charges help to fix the problems.
so full cycles every once in a while does not sound so bad.

Yes, that's actually recommended procedure for any lithium-ion battery. Top offs are fine for normal use, but every once in a while you should do a full recharge in order to keep the meter calibrated. Most battery sites I've seen recommend that every 30 charges you do a full discharge/charge cycle.

[sarikan]

Ok, as a final update to this topic, I'd like to say that I've sent my device to Irex. It has been more than a year I've bought it, but it was considered under warranty, and they fixed it.
I've asked for a replacement, but not surprisingly, I did not get it. Irex told me that they have changed the board, and the buttons, but I could not get an answer to my question why this might have happened.
The device seems to be working fine now. The question I could not find an answer for is: how did the PCB got damaged? I am happy to get a free repair, but I am not as comfortable as I would be with a new device. I hope this will be the last problem I'll have with this device (fingers crossed)

Best Regards
Seref

[kevine]

FYI: Mine had the same problem after about 3 months - I suspect it is little to do with the battery, but more to do with the capacitive buttons. Mine would "work" until I used the buttons a little and then lock up in the manner you described. Touching parts of the lower case a couple cm away from the sensors would also trigger the sensors. If the DR got far enough past the boot process for me to "lock" the sensors, then the DR was sort of usable. I suspect a stream of spurious/out-of-bounds sensor triggers resulting in the DR giving up and flashing red, etc, is more likely the situation (at least for me). Depending on how bad the triggers were, determined how far one got through the boot process.

Mine is now currently in transit to me after a repair under waranty (support was helpful and fast).

Hopefully, this is the last I/we see of this particular issue.

[kadbr0]

I have also experienced problems that look like the one discussed here. It happens most of the time when the DR1000 is charging and i find it back with the red light on and empty battery. Using the reset button has solved this so far for me.

Dik