RED Brick won't charge

[Jameson Jordan]

Got three Bricks back from a rental and one won't take a charge. I think what these guys did is plug the power cable into the charger AND the Drive AC Power cable into the back of the RED Charger at the same time (I have no idea how they even thought of that). They called me saying the charger wouldn't work... I went to set and they had it set up like that. I unplugged the Drive power and the Bricks started charging. However I didn't stick around to make sure every brick took a charge... I'm guessing the Brick that doesn't work was the one on the charger while the extra AC cable was plugged in.

Do you guys think that fried it?

Is there any place in Los Angeles that is certified to repair or at least take a look at these Batteries? I think I read somewhere on here that Switronix does repairs... but I'm hoping I can avoid the crazy Dangerous Goods shipping costs... or is it a safe bet that the Brick is Dead?

[Curran Giddens]

The Red charger does not charge batteries when also running power to the Aux output. This is normal.

The Switronix repair is well worth it for $50. But I think they may have a four-battery minimum now.

[Jameson Jordan]

Do you think there's any connection to their running power to the Aux output to the Brick now not taking a charge? The brick and the connectors all look fine (and both sides of the charger work for the other batteries) I'm trying to figure out where the malfunction came from.

[Curran Giddens]

No idea what went wrong with yours.

The Brick that I had repaired by Switronix didn't show any signs of damage either. At least no more than the rest of my Bricks. But it was the connector block that was broken.

[ericyoung]

So basically they had power going INTO the charger from the normal mains input AND the DC output connectors?! They should certainly contribute to repairs if your insurance doesn't cover it.

Without a circuit diagram or disassembly (not recommended for unqualified!) there's no way of knowing for sure what may have been damaged. Talk to RED directly would be the best course of action.

[Tony Lorentzen]

The RED batteries have an over-current protection circuit built-in so your battery may just have gone into this state which would prevent it from working. There are ways to troubleshoot the batteries and perform diagnostics on them, but it requires specialized software and hardware. I have those things available to me and if you want to send me the battery (I'm in Denmark) then I'd be happy to see what's wrong with it and report back - free of charge. If the over-current protection has been activated then I can reset the battery and it would work fine after that. That would also be free of charge from one fellow reduser to another.

[Jameson Jordan]

Tony, that is very very generous. I'm hoping I won't have to take you up on that offer (to avoid the shipping of Dangerous Goods to Denmark) but I will let you know if I can't track down repair by the end of this week. Thanks so much