Worklog Reviive Worklog and Questions - Portable Wii Brought Back From The Dead!

RoseDagger

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Also, these cells had no obvious branding and look pretty sketchy and cheap to me. I agree with Shank; the guy who originally built this 100% half-assed it.
Btw NCR is Panasonic batteries, and those green ones are quite commonly used and reliable, so it is probably not the battery quality that was the issue. I would still place my bet on a short unintentionally draining/destroying them. And the B variant as far as I know is button top with no protection circuits, so they don't have any fuse or any other protection that might have been blown from heat/soldering or from a potential short.
 
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Big Update: The two Samsung 18650s just came in the mail and their voltages are both a hearty 3.52V

Later today after I finish up work, I’ll solder them up in the portable and make another post here about the result. I’m super excited!

Also, is it alright to solder directly to the postitive and negative plates on each side of the cell?
 

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Big Update: The two Samsung 18650s just came in the mail and their voltages are both a hearty 3.52V

Later today after I finish up work, I’ll solder them up in the portable and make another post here about the result. I’m super excited!

Also, is it alright to solder directly to the postitive and negative plates on each side of the cell?
Nice! And yes you sure can, BUT keep in mind I would suggest using the highest temp setting of your iron and only touch the battery for a two seconds or less if you can. You want to touch in quick and get out quick (also roughing up each side with some sand paper). Here is a video on it:
 
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Nice! And yes you sure can, BUT keep in mind I would suggest using the highest temp setting of your iron and only touch the battery for a two seconds or less if you can. You want to touch in quick and get out quick (also roughing up each side with some sand paper). Here is a video on it:
Gotcha. Thanks so much for the info! I’ll post another update once I’ve completed the process (and hopefully have a functional Wii portable!!).
 

RoseDagger

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Nice, I would also suggest to check for shorts before connecting the batteries. Checking the positive and negative wires for the batteries, and the different voltage outputs on the pms or from the wii to gnd, and make sure that the resistances are not 0, we still don't know that killed the previous batteries, so doing a sanity check first could be smart

And 3.5v might be a bit to low to boot the wii, I'm unsure, but if it does not boot, you can just charge them for a while and try again later
 
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Nice, I would also suggest to check for shorts before connecting the batteries. Checking the positive and negative wires for the batteries, and the different voltage outputs on the pms or from the wii to gnd, and make sure that the resistances are not 0, we still don't know that killed the previous batteries, so doing a sanity check first could be smart

And 3.5v might be a bit to low to boot the wii, I'm unsure, but if it does not boot, you can just charge them for a while and try again later
Thanks. Will definitely check the wires and PMS for shorts.
 
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Totally meant to do this update last night but I wired up the batteries and still no luck. I charged them for a couple hours, still nothing. I’ll check later for voltage regarding the barreljack port, but another issue I hadn’t anticipated was that my current iron is really old and isn’t up to the task of soldering like it once was. The heat distribution isn’t right at all; the tip doesn’t heat up as much as the sides of the contact point do, so you have to solder at a weird angle. It doesn’t do a good job of controlling the solder blob either. I think I’m just gonna order the Hakko 888D and do this right.
 
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Just to throw my 2¢ into the mix, I was looking at the rvl PMS in this build and was going to mention when you have your new batteries wired up you could check the vsys voltage of the PMS to see if the BQ chip for the charger wasn't accidentally fried.

I did notice on the PMS there's a stray wire that looks to be in a location tied to vsys and hotglued in else where, I attached an image with the locations circled. Can't say if this wire is a problem but the location it's soldered to on the pms is a great spot to check voltage here for the battery chip for vsys.
 

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Just to throw my 2¢ into the mix, I was looking at the rvl PMS in this build and was going to mention when you have your new batteries wired up you could check the vsys voltage of the PMS to see if the BQ chip for the charger wasn't accidentally fried.

I did notice on the PMS there's a stray wire that looks to be in a location tied to vsys and hotglued in else where, I attached an image with the locations circled. Can't say if this wire is a problem but the location it's soldered to on the pms is a great spot to check voltage here for the battery chip for vsys.
Gotcha. Will check this out tomorrow. Thanks for pointing it out!
 
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Much to my dismay, today, out of curiosity, I measured the voltages of the batteries again after 2 days of them being wired in and both dropped from 3.51V to a sorry 0.82. This pretty much confirms that a short killed both these and the old cells. Pretty tempting just to take out the Wii Mobo and just build a G Wii or Louii instead…
 
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Much to my dismay, today, out of curiosity, I measured the voltages of the batteries again after 2 days of them being wired in and both dropped from 3.51V to a sorry 0.82. This pretty much confirms that a short killed both these and the old cells. Pretty tempting just to take out the Wii Mobo and just build a G Wii or Louii instead…
Did you happen to look at that suspect wire i mentioned before and disconnect it?
 
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I didn’t even know this could even happen, but since yesterday when I disconnected the batteries, they were both at 0.82V and today, about 15 hours later, I measured them again and now one of them is back at its initial 3.52V from when I first took them out of the box, and the other is crawling up and is at 1.82V now. I’m honestly not even sure what I should try next. I’ll measure the voltage of both again in a couple hours and note if it changes again.
 
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jefflongo

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I didn’t even know this could even happen, but since yesterday when I disconnected the batteries, they were both at 0.82V and today, about 15 hours later, I measured them again and now one of them is back at its initial 3.52V from when I first took them out of the box, and the other is crawling up and is at 1.82V now. I’m honstley not even sure what I should try next. I’ll measure the voltage of both again in a couple hours and note if it changes again.
If the battery voltage dropped that low they probably are irreparably damaged. Even if they charge back up they will probably only have a fraction of their initial capacity. I would just get new batteries.
 

RoseDagger

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I’m honstley not even sure what I should try next.
If you still want to continue trying to fix this portable, then i would suggest getting a battery caddy or something so you can easily switch batteries and remove them whenever you aren't actively trying to boot it. And/or add a on-off switch between batteries and the pms so you can disconnect them with ease at will. And btw you only need one battery to make it boot, adding more batteries only extends the runtime, so until you have fixed the portable, i would suggest only running one battery at a time.

As for the next steps in trouble shooting, i would isolate each system and test them separately, though primarily the pms as we are having power problems.

So, disconnecting the pms from everything else, and just have it alone with a battery, and maybe the status led, and check that there is no shorts, that it turns on properly and that all the voltages are correct, then add in one thing at a time, charging, fan, LCD, check that each one of them works before moving on to re adding the Wii itself. That way you will at least have a bit firmer ground and knowledge of what's working and where the problems might be.

For what might have killed the batteries, if there is not a direct short between b+ and gnd, then there might be a short on vsys to gnd? Vsys is always on, so it could have drained the batteries even when the pms is off. Otherwise it would be down to isolating the pms, and seeing if the problem still happens when nothing is connected to it, and if it is the pms that is broken, or if the problem goes away and that it is the wiring that was bad.

Edit: the status led is also connected to vsys, and is a potential culprit, so i would disconnect and rewire it too btw
 
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Some things to assist me in hopefully fixing this portable have arrived, including an 18650 battery cell caddy, 22 gauge wire, a flux pen, 1lb of kester solder, and nickel strips (for soldering the batteries when it’s time to close it up).

Some more things that still are on the way include: 34 gauge magnet wire, another set of 18650s cause the first were sadly drained, and an RVL-PMS 2 from 4layertech, just in case I can’t fix this PMS (and if I can fix this and don’t have to replace the PMS, I’ll most likely save the PMS 2 for a potential portable I’d build from scratch).
 

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RoseDagger

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Be careful that battery-caddy seems to take two batteries in series, not parallel!
Batteries in series increase the voltage, while parallel increases capacity.
Having the two batteries in series doubles the voltage, which will exceed what the PMS is supposed to handle.
 
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Be careful that battery-caddy seems to take two batteries in series, not parallel!
Batteries in series increase the voltage, while parallel increases capacity.
Having the two batteries in series doubles the voltage, which will exceed what the PMS is supposed to handle.
I have multiple caddies, there is a single celled one which is what I’ll most likely use for testing because as you said, multiple batteries only extend run time. Will this caddy work?
image.jpg
 
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I am unhealthily invested in this thread - good luck my guy I hope you get everything figured out and mad props to you for not just pulling any salvageable parts out and making your own forever ago! Can't wait to see the end of this
 
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