FIXED battery not charging/100% in app/solid charge light/dead when disconnected/parallel charging

disclaimer this worked on my op-z, it may not work on yours. i hope it fixes yours, but if things go further south, i am not responsible. research and make an informed decision.

hi! i tried to use my op-z after putting baby in a corner for 6-8 months. when connected to usb power it worked great, showed 100% battery in the app, and had a solid led indicating it was fully charged. this, however, was not the case. upon disconnect baby no bleep. multimeter confirmed death… or was it just a coma!

after digging a bit, i came to the conclusion that the protection circuit got tripped. bereft of a specialized charger, i decided to try parallel charging from another 3.7v LiON battery (this was a cell out of my blindy-tron 900 flashlight) to bump just enough pixies across to unlock. i stripped two short lengths of solid core hookup wire and used a rubber band to connect a wire each to the + and - (did not want to solder/did not have magnets). i then touched the wires to the + and - contacts on the op-z battery for approx 15 seconds. slapped the batt back in and put her on the mains. charging led went blinky blink (and i got a full charge)!

https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/low_voltage_cut_off

https://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?245032-How-to-reset-battery-protection

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Man I owe you a one full meal and some.
I received my brand new op-z wednesday and it was not charging. The TE support thread and solutions were not working. So I thought to give this a try before sending it back to the retailer. I did it with a Li-ion battery out of and old nikon cam 9.7v. Multimeter came in very handy for this, I connected the cables to the meter sticks because they ar sturdier and they’re pointy which was handy with the little contact plantes in the op-z battery…now I’m rocking my OP-z enjoying like a child with a brand new toy!.
Thank you!

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14 months later and you’ve saved my bacon. Thank you!

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yay! happy this has helped!

The first link is now dead. Here’s the cached version from archive.org:

http://web.archive.org/web/20210418023214/https://batteryuniversity.com/index.php/learn/article/low_voltage_cut_off

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I was about to return my new OP-Z but gave this a go as a last ditch attempt (the battery was already dead anyway, right?) and it worked first time!

I only jumped it for 3-4 secs then put it straight back in to charge. It’s now charging away happily. Thank you!

Does anyone know what the three terminals are?

I got the multimeter onto mine and I am getting nothing from the terminals at all so its a bit hard to work out which is the positive or negative!

Cheers

Andy

doesn’t it say right on the battery?

Thanks, I need to check that on mine to make sure that I’m not the complete numptie that I look like…

My battery looks nothing like that, nothing printed on that side at all and nothing worthwhile on the other side either, so luckily I’m not a total numptie.

Thanks for the image and help though, time to attach a battery to it…

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I just wanted to chime in here too and say that this worked for me. I tried everything else before this and then gave up for a while, but pulling a 18650 cell from one of my flashlights and connecting it for 15 seconds was all we needed to make the battery chargeable again. Lesson learned that it seems like we can’t let these things get too dead.

Thanks for sharing this; I was not looking forward to sourcing a replacement battery!

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The unit must have too high a standby current draw. I might measure it when I get mine. This doesn’t really happen on OP-1, which is good, since it’s WAY harder to pull that battery. If you’re not going to use your OP-Z for awhile considering charging to 60% or so and removing the battery.

nice the 18650 trick brought my battery back to life <3