XTS500 Battery use question

[laramiecountyCERT]

This might not be the right list for this and the moderators can move this if they need to. I did a search of battery use on the APCO-25 VHF (9600kb) system and our new trunked system but could not find any information. What we have is the 2100MAh batteries and they are not lasting a whole shift for some reason. We are using an Impress charger so they are being conditioned they way they are supposed to and the teams are only pulling batteries that have a full charge on them but the new system seems to be sucking the life out of them at a very rapid rate. Has anyone run across this issue? If anyone has any suggestions on what the problem might be? I was thinking about getting some of the 4100MAh batteries and see who they stand as far as testing.

Thanks

[fineshot1]

You did not mention the motorola oem part number and date codes.

How long have these batteries been in service(ie: 6 months, 1 year, 2 years)?

Are they used 24 hours a day(3 shifts) or only on the individual officers single shift
and how long is each shift?

The system should not have much effect on the battery drain of portable radios
unless they are crossing many zone boundaries and auto affiliating like crazy.

[laramiecountyCERT]

Sorry part number is NTN8294 for the batteries and I will have to grab the date codes off them when I get into the office. Use is per shift (12 hours max) most of the shifts are 8 hours. We have three different sites around Cheyenne so I am not sure if they are afilitating between sites but I am going to assume so as the team travel in the county and around town. The batteries have been in service for about three months as a guess but will check the PO's to see when they were purchased to be sure. Along the lines of does the radio affiliate based on coverage like a cell phone per site? Like I said I am still new to the trunking thing and just program them and not really up on how the affiliation thing works but have a knowledge of cell towers as I used to work for Quest (don't hold that against me) so If the radios are like cell phones then they might be running affiliation per tower.
Hope that helps.
Thanks

[fineshot1]

OK - Please confirm that these are "Motorola batteries" or "after market batteries".

Most of my research seems to indicate that they are NiMH batteries somewhere in the
1500-2100mAh range but google brings up a million hits so not sure.

At any rate they should be lasting at least one shift unless there is a high amount of
transmitting as compared to listening.

You say you are charging them in an impress charger but these are not impress batteries
(per my google searching) - correct me if I am wrong on that. I also charge non-impress
batteries in an impress rack charger and they seem to charge them fine so not sure whats
going on except to say if they are non-moto batteries you may have gotten bit by some of
those cheap knock-offs.

[escomm]

ntn8294 is a 1525mAh NiCD

[laramiecountyCERT]

Well after pulling the right invoice for the batteries purchased (this happens when you don't get enough sleep) what we have are the NNTN6034A which is a 4151Mah battery and they are being used in the Impress chargers so they are being cycled through when needed. I am thinking that the fact we have three towers in town might be the reason that they are not lasting so long I think the date code on these is: 931 AJR2 that's the only thing I can see that might be a date code on them. Does the trunking act like a cell phone in the respect of jumping towers if one is not available? It might be the reason that the batteries are not lasting and they as less then three months old purchased as of Feb 15th from the received stamp on the invoice.
Suggestions?

[WCHija]

Are you sure that you actually have NNTN6034A batteries? Obviously you were invoiced for them but, I use that battery and run for 3 12 hour shifts before I have to recharge. If you are running through that battery in an 8 hour shift or less you have problems.

[Pj]

I didn't pull the part number, but are the batteries themselves impress batteries? Non-impress batteries will charge as normal batteries in an impress charge with no advanced features as reconditioning if needed.

The tower sites shouldn't have anything to do with battery life, at least in your area.

Are these the 800 or VHF for the WyDOT system?

Unless someone programmed some settings wrong, you either got a bad batch of batteries or the radio is truely tx'ing more than it should. Set a radio aside and see if you see it tx'ing.

When where these batteries received?

Could be a point to warranty the batts.

[laramiecountyCERT]

They are a Impress battery Li-Ion 4150MAh battery from Motorola. The new system is VHF Trunked 9600Kb CC and three towers in the coverage area. They were received three months ago from the date on the invoice. So how do you figure out the date code? If I could do that I might be able to find the date of manufacture but I thought that the Li-Ion batteries would last longer than that. I might have to check with our techs and see if the radios don't need adjustments as to what they are doing affiliation wise in the system to see if they are not affiliating to each tower when they move out of coverage from one tower to another. I know that most of the radios are not scanning if that helps as we use a single channel and talkgroup for operations. I can use mine on a single talkgroup and tower with no problem for almost three days before having to put mine on the charger. Could it be that some of the team is using a vehicle charger to keep a battery fresh? I was thinking that might be part of the problem as the car chargers don't charge the same way the Impress chargers do with cycling the battery. I will have to do some checking and see how many of them are using the car chargers compared to just the Impress chargers at home or work. Could this make a difference for the batteries on the rate of charge in the car compared to the house? I thought that the car chargers were voltage regulated as that's what the users manual says. But then again I have seen the voltages on the car chargers drop when the ignition is turned over as well.

[escomm]

Using car chargers should not impact performance significantly, especially if the batteries are making it through the Impres charger on a regular basis as well. Since these are 5000s, see if you can get the BATT feature programmed into the portables, and then see what the capacity on the batteries is after a full charge on the Impres charger. You can also keep an eye on it throughout the shift to see if the drain is coming in spurts or if it's consistent. I suspect it has something to do with roaming on the sites, but even then, these are 4 amp hour batteries we're talking about, even at a full duty cycle on the transmitter I'd expect one of these batteries to last 3-4 hours...

[fineshot1]

FYI: If they do use the car chargers then after that charge event they will lose the battery display state of charge indicator
since these are impress batteries and are being charged by a non-impress charger but as already said that should not effect
the battery performance itself.