Reconditioning Rechargeable Batteries

A year or so ago, I purchased a cordless vacuum to use on my sailboat. There are a lot of brine flies out on the Great Salt Lake and they love to infiltrate the cabin of my boat where they die within a few hours. I used to just sweep them up but having a vacuum is much easier. The only problem is that rechargeable batteries don't last forever. Over the Memorial Day weekend we went to the boat only to discover the vacuum lasted about a minute or two before dying.

Sometimes the rechargeable batteries still have a charge and it is the charge controller that thinks it is dead. I brought the vacuum down to my office so I could play with it throughout the day. The first thing I discovered is that I could plug the charging cord into the vacuum and it would immediately tell me I had most of a charge. I quickly unplugged the vacuum and would use it for a minute before it died. I continued doing this 3 or 4 more times until the charge only lasted a second or two. Then I let the vacuum charge for several hours.

I hoped by running the battery down to truly nothing would reset the charge controller and I could get more than a minute or two of use. Just to get an accurate reading I started a stopwatch as I turned on the vacuum and began cleaning my office carpet. One minute and six seconds later, the vacuum shut off with a dead battery.

I looked up the user manual on the Internet and quickly scanned the entire book. I didn't find any help about how to replace the internal battery. About the only hope I came across is that it told me to take the device apart and remove the battery before throwing it away. The good news there is that I should be able to easily take the unit apart and remove the battery. Unfortunately the battery is soldered into the printed circuit board and is not meant to be replaced.

Fortunately I have been able to put the vacuum back together and now have to decide how much effort I want to put into fixing it. It would not be difficult to cut the wires from the battery and solder in a new one. Then again, for the price I paid for the thing, it might be easier to buy a new vacuum. Naturally it would be a different one. One with better batteries.

Carefully Balancing Battery Power

Every week I participate in at least one emergency amateur radio (ham) net. My Sunday evening net usually includes a training item to help us keep our ham radio skills sharp. Our most common topic is making sure we keep radio batteries charged and always have spares. This comes up so much because someone will start talking and then drop off the air with the primary cause being a dead battery. The guilty party will sheepishly rejoin the group and admit to what we already knew: no power.

This evening I find myself nursing the battery life on one of my two mobile phones. I am at the airport waiting to catch my weekly flight from San Francisco to Salt Lake City. While taking the shuttle bus from my office to the airport, I have been listening to music on my phone. I used my work phone as it is the one paired with my wireless headphones.

For the flight home I plan to watch a movie. Once again I will be using my work phone as it has a larger screen than my personal phone. I just looked at my power meter and I am burning through my battery rather quickly. I decided to turn off my music to help conserve power so I have more than enough to watch a movie on the plane. On my flight there are USB port at each seat to charge electronic devices. Unfortunately I don't carry a charging cable with me for my work phone. I may just want to get a spare for this occasion. Then I won't have to work so carefully to balance battery power.

Power on Airplanes

I spent the last two days flying to Lund, Sweden for meetings here. During the flight from Salt Lake City to Paris I spent most of the time working on a presentation I will be giving during the trip. Fortunately my laptop has a seemingly never-ending battery that lasted the entire flight. However if I had needed it, I could have plugged in my power supply and charged the battery. There is a universal power outlet on most International flights. It will either be between the seats in front of you or down behind your knees.

I started my trip in San Francisco and the young lady sitting next to me had a phone with very little battery life left. She looked at the funny blue light above the outlet on the seats in front of us and asked me if it was a power outlet. After all, a universal power outlet will accept most plugs and so it doesn't look like your standard outlet you would find at home. I told her should could use it to charge her phone which she did.

Not all planes have the outlets and so you can't rely on them being there. However if your plane has them, you should not hesitate to keep your electronics topped up. Almost all of my flight experiences are restricted to Delta, Alaska, and Southwest. My experience is that most Delta planes have the outlets. On Alaska about 60% of the planes have them. Very few, if any Southwest planes have power to the seats. Your mileage may vary.

Time to Break Out the Walkman

This morning I pulled out a decade-old Sony Walkman and actually had a legitimate use for it. There was a radio program I wanted to listen to. It was something I could do at the same time I rode my indoor bike. Yes, I would have rather ridden outside but it was raining and so listening to my program while I got some exercise seemed like a good idea.

I have an old Sony Walkman that I got probably 10 to 20 years ago. It was one of the last cassette player models released and it also has a built-in radio. I found a fresh set of AA batteries and connected it to my favorite ear buds. Then I quickly found the right station and had a great indoor ride.

Sure I could have downloaded an application for one of my smartphones and streamed the program to it. However that seemed like a lot of work when all I needed to do was add a fresh set of batteries to something ready to go. Sometimes those old technologies may seem out of date but often times they still have a purpose. Today was one of those times.

Keep Your Batteries Charged

Yesterday was a very long day of travel. I didn't get home until after 1am last night due to a number of circumstances beyond my control. Now I am headed to Seattle for a Postgres Conference. I'm just glad I didn't have to spend the night at some airport.

I was happy to get on the earlier flight home but it turned out to be a false hope. I finished writing my BLOG entry and boarded the plane. They were just getting ready to close the door when the pilot came on and informed everyone that we had a flat tire. We all had to get off the plane so they could fix it. I thought that was weird because I have been on a plane while they fixed a flat in the past. As we started to go, we were told to bring all our personal belongings. That was my plan anyways but I was disheartened when they brought me my gate-checked bag and told me the plane wasn't going anywhere.

We got off the aircraft and were directed to one of two lines to rebook our travel plans. Naturally I was at the end of the line. They then opened a third line and I jumped at the chance to move up. I went from the very back to fourth. The only problem was that the first person in my line took a complete hour to rebook his flight. In the mean time the rest of us were wondering what we could do to help things move along. I decided to give the airline a call on my mobile phone.

When I completed my BLOG yesterday I had about half my battery left on my iPhone. While I plugged my phone in to charge it the previous night, I also turned off the lights in my hotel room. The wall socket I used was connected to the light switch for the hotel and so by turning off the lights, I turned off the charge to my phone. "No Problem," I thought in the morning, "my iPhone can last several days without needing to be recharged." That was before a busy day on the road.

I used the phone to find directions to our meeting (people are amazed to find out that the GPS and map feature with directions on the iPhone is free . . . I wonder if it costs on other phones). I then used the map feature to find a place to find a specific store in Louisville. I then used the map to help us get back to the airport as I was the navigator for the driver. Now I was using it for its primary purpose: to call people. The airline wasn't able to help me on the phone but I was taken care of anyways. The moment my existing flight was cancelled, the computer immediately rebooked me on my original itinerary. Then I had to make arrangements to get a ride home from the airport. When I finally got home last night after 1am, I had a small sliver of battery life. So I guess an iPhone's battery is good for about one day of constant use. That is good to know and a better reason to keep the thing charged.