Batteries giving a red light and not charging

[sander kamp]

The problem I am having is that sometimes my batteries give a fault when trying to charge them. After I put the battery in the charger the charger takes some time to decide what to do and then the red light comes up, I can hear a click in the charger and seemingly nothing happens. Detaching and reattaching the battery doesn't help, the only thing that works is to leave them on there for some time, perhaps 30 minutes or an hour, with the red light on and then detaching and attaching again. After that the orange charging light comes up and they charge fine.

This happened yesterday with two of my batteries. They still had between 20 and 30 percent charged, or two bars on the side of the battery. They were not overheated and nothing else seemed to be wrong with them.

The strange thing is that my third battery charged fine after being depleted until 10 to 15 percent.

I have a feeling something is wrong here. I am taking care not to discharge my batteries too much and still I have these charging problems. I am on a shoot for 4 weeks starting on Monday and obviously not being able to predict whether my batteries are charging is a major headache.

Can anybody shine a light on what's normal behaviour for the RED batteries? How do I know if something is wrong?

 

[Damon Meledones]

I've come back to the charger to find still-uncharged batteries with a red light also. Now I always have to wait and make sure they start charging when I put them on. I'd also appreciate some input on this phenomena.

 

[Brook Willard]

When batteries dip below about 10% on the camera, they will fail to charge when put on the RED chargers at first. Leave them on the chargers with the red light on for a few minutes, then pull them off and reseat them. You may have to do it a few times, but they will eventually start to charge.

 

[Mark Pedersen]

When batteries dip below about 10% on the camera, they will fail to charge when put on the RED chargers at first. Leave them on the chargers with the red light on for a few minutes, then pull them off and reseat them. You may have to do it a few times, but they will eventually start to charge.

Seems like a bizarre process, and not exactly confidence-building.

I haven't had this experience with other batteries. Anyone else?

BTW, anyone using IDX VL-4Si or VAL-4Si chargers with Red batteries? Any issues?

M

 

[Olav Skogoy]

When batteries dip below about 10% on the camera, they will fail to charge when put on the RED chargers at first. Leave them on the chargers with the red light on for a few minutes, then pull them off and reseat them. You may have to do it a few times, but they will eventually start to charge.

I have the same experience with my batteries. When you get to the end of the power left in the batteries I have noticed more heat to build up inside. It seems that the charger will not charge until the battery has cooled down to a certain temperature. The tricky part is that when the charger doesn't charge because of the residual heat in the battery it doesn't try again later after the battery has cooled off. As a future feature it would be nice to have the charger retry several times after some minutes of delay allowing the battery to cool first.

Olav

 

[sander kamp]

When batteries dip below about 10% on the camera, they will fail to charge when put on the RED chargers at first. Leave them on the chargers with the red light on for a few minutes, then pull them off and reseat them. You may have to do it a few times, but they will eventually start to charge.

That's the thing - it happened to me with batteries that still had between 20 and 30% of charge. And I put them on and off the charger more than a couple of times.

The temperature reason might make sense though, we were inside with the airconditioning off because of the noise and it was very hot. I will try if I can test this.

Please anybody from RED respond to this!

 

[thistle]

I had the same thing happen. More than a bit frustrating. We were having some power issues at this location, so I thought maybe a temporary power outage caused the charger to freeze. This is the least of my problems since my camera stopped working today. I am trying to remain calm, since anything I throw wont make it all the way to California anyway.

 

[Lauri Kettunen]

I also noticed that some of my batteries did not last 90 minutes, but instead something like 45-50 minutes. But then, found a reason for this; It's the meachanics of connector.

When a battery is put on the charger or on the batter plate it clicks. Then, I gently push and pull the connector end of the battery in the perpedicular direction towards and away from the plate. At this point another "click" can be heard. It's only now when all pins are properly connected to the battery.

Another detail was that after the first charging cycles the batteries did not get fully charged. When put to the camera, the monitor showed something like 92-94%. The batteries can still be charged to full 100% by turning the charger off when the green lights are on and then by turning it on again. Thereafter the batteries get charged and once installed to the camera the monitor shows either 99 or 100%.

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

I also noticed that some of my batteries did not last 90 minutes, but instead something like 45-50 minutes. But then, found a reason for this; It's the meachanics of connector.

When a battery is put on the charger or on the batter plate it clicks. Then, I gently push and pull the connector end of the battery in the perpedicular direction towards and away from the plate. At this point another "click" can be heard. It's only now when all pins are properly connected to the battery.

Another detail was that after the first charging cycles the batteries did not get fully charged. When put to the camera, the monitor showed something like 92-94%. The batteries can still be charged to full 100% by turning the charger off when the green lights are on and then by turning it on again. Thereafter the batteries get charged and once installed to the camera the monitor shows either 99 or 100%.

vodooo part 2

 

[Lauri Kettunen]

vodooo part 2

The real vodoo part is this; The reason I observed the problem with the pins of the battery plate was that with one of the batteries I had problems booting up the camera (the LCD in the back showed "booting ...") whenever there was less than 25% of power available. Since I had labelled all batteries I knew the problem appeared always with one and the same battery.

 

[Travis MacRitchie]

I've been recently having this problem as well. I find that if I get the red light just remove the brick from charger for 5-10 minutes and then re-seat it. Then I watch it to make sure it starts charging for a few seconds, and it is usually good to go. Seems to work with even the most depleted batteries.

 

[David Wyatt]

I've noticed this problem too & it's pretty annoying when you're in a rush & just want to slap a battery on charge & get back to work. One solution I've noticed before is that if you've got a second charger you can swap the defective battery between chargers a couple of times and then it'll start charging (usually on the second charger, not the original one)...no idea why this seems to work...more voodoo...maybe we should just start offering sacrifices to the Red gods?

 

[Sean Sweeney]

I've had the same problem. I'm assuming Red will be fixing this in later models of the charger/batteries. Any possibility for exchange or repair (down the road, of course) for those of us stuck with the current ones?

 

[sander kamp]

I am pretty sure now that it is a temperature thing. For instance when a battery is completely drained, just let it cool down outside of the charger (put a fan on it for instance) and after a while it will start charging just fine.

But when ambient temperatures are high or when the battery has been used for a long time on the camera then the red light will come up. Annoying, but now I know at least how it works.

 

[Sam Roberts]

Many chargers won't charge if the attached battery is too hot. A sensor monitors the battery temp and when it drops to within the charge range the charger will kick in.