BAD MINITOR 5s

[firefighter13669]

I had a custmer drop off two Motorola Minitor 5 pagers with the following problem.

Pagers will not power up with a battery in them.They will power up when placed in the charger without the battery.

I am thinking they fried an internal board..

Has anyone else seen this problem

[tvsjr]

When the charger is attached, the battery/charge circuit is isolated from the pager power circuit. Idea being that you can safely charge the battery while leaving the unit on. Thus, the problem is almost certainly in the contacts or the battery.

On the batteries - did they remove the orange protective label over the contacts? I've seen people forget to remove those and it tends to cause intermittents... other than that, clean the contacts.

[ai4ui]

Here are the problems that we have found with the Minitor V pagers:

They stop working for no obvious reason and require a vacation in Mexico.

Don't let your crews:

-drop them. If you drop them they will require a vacation in Mexico.
-get them wet. If you do they require a vacation in Mexico.
-press the reset button. After a few months the rubber over the reset button decays and then there is a nice hole in
the top. Of course this requires a vacation in Mexico because invariably this won't get reported until the pager gets
wet.
-wear them on their belt. The movement of the pager against the belt will cause the battery to move. Over time (a
short time) the battery retainer will deform and allow that battery to move, causing intermittent operation. A
vacation in Mexico will fix this for a little while.

Your crews will complain if they charge them at night by their bed because they will emit a whine. A vacation in Mexico does not fix this.

They will false activate when there is no activity on the channel for no apparent reason. A vacation in Mexico does not fix this.

All in all the Minitor V is a terrible product. We are actively looking for an alternative alerting solution.

Regards,

Robert

[firefighter13669]

I did a few test on it and put good batts that were charged on them and it gives me a dead batt indicator when in those pagers.
After a little more conversation the person stated that they may have put an adapter on the charger that was to large!

[tvsjr]

Here are the problems that we have found with the Minitor V pagers:

They stop working for no obvious reason and require a vacation in Mexico.

Don't let your crews:

-drop them. If you drop them they will require a vacation in Mexico.
-get them wet. If you do they require a vacation in Mexico.
-press the reset button. After a few months the rubber over the reset button decays and then there is a nice hole in
the top. Of course this requires a vacation in Mexico because invariably this won't get reported until the pager gets
wet.
-wear them on their belt. The movement of the pager against the belt will cause the battery to move. Over time (a
short time) the battery retainer will deform and allow that battery to move, causing intermittent operation. A
vacation in Mexico will fix this for a little while.

Your crews will complain if they charge them at night by their bed because they will emit a whine. A vacation in Mexico does not fix this.

They will false activate when there is no activity on the channel for no apparent reason. A vacation in Mexico does not fix this.

All in all the Minitor V is a terrible product. We are actively looking for an alternative alerting solution.

Regards,

Robert

The M5 has some problems. Less than the M3 and M4, for certain.

- Drop them... I fumble mine frequently.
- Get them wet... not excessively, but mine's been moist more than once.
- Press the reset button... I use mine all the time. I have one of the first M5s shipped to customers. No problem.
- Wear them on the belt... every day, all day, frequently under bunker gear. No problems.
- Whine... there is a new version of charger out with no whine (our newest units don't do it).
- False activation... either interference from a cell phone or some other source. To get the sensitivity as good as it is (substantially better than an M4), they have to do some tricks. That means more false activations. If you don't like it, turn the squelch way up.

It has problems, but it's not nearly as bad as you make it out to be...

As for the OP, he used the wrong size power adapter? D'oh!

[firefighter13669]

So the person stated WOW when I though I had seen it all

[northstarfire0693]

- Drop them... I fumble mine frequently.
- Get them wet... not excessively, but mine's been moist more than once.
- Press the reset button... I use mine all the time. I have one of the first M5s shipped to customers. No problem.
- Wear them on the belt... every day, all day, frequently under bunker gear. No problems.
- Whine... there is a new version of charger out with no whine (our newest units don't do it).
- False activation... either interference from a cell phone or some other source. To get the sensitivity as good as it is (substantially better than an M4), they have to do some tricks. That means more false activations. If you don't like it, turn the squelch way up.

I have done the same here and had ice on mine from being wet at -35 and the damn thing fell over 12 feet off a helo and it still works.

I dont know what that guys crew is doing to their pagers, but it all sounds wierd

[MOTO_LR]

Solution to all of the above problems... MINITOR II

Just received an order for 10 more from a satisfied customer (who is dissatisfied
with his Minitor III's, IV's, and V's)

Bob

[tvsjr]

Solution to all of the above problems... MINITOR II

Just received an order for 10 more from a satisfied customer (who is dissatisfied
with his Minitor III's, IV's, and V's)

Bob

Wanna buy some? I've got about a dozen with chargers sitting around. We are alerted on two channels (city and county), thus only the M5 will work for us.

PM me if you're interested.

[Batwings21]

There is a falsing adjustment in the minitor v software version's newer than 1.0 with all but the original firmware. It is not squelch adjustment, it is a sensitivity adjustment. To access it
1) read the pager
2) then close the user info screen when it pops up
3) make sure the cursor is inside the application window and press the "s" key