Still having battery issues with my latest-software Karoo 1
Answered
For the past few months my Karoo has been rock solid. But after the latest software update, I'm having battery issues again. With the battery fully charged, on a previously used course and brightness set pretty low and adaptive lighting off, I'm getting the 'low battery warning' after just one hour. It is switching to low battery mode, and then a few minutes later it shuts down completely.
Has anyone else had any issues since the new update came out a few weeks ago?
Chip
-
Official comment
Hey Chip. Sorry to hear that you have been having battery issues again. We would like to analyze the files of your recent rides. I have created a support ticket for you and will be emailing you shortly please follow up on that and we will help you get this resolved.
Comment actions -
Hey, I have the same problem,
its been like this for a while, started beginning of November and got worse in the last few weeks. Colder weather, around 0 to -5°C, seems to be strenuous for the battery. The Karoo doesn’t even hold up for an hour. Drains about 1% per 6min, below 96% it jumps to ~70% and drains fast within 10 to 30min. I restart it and it dies again immediately. When I return home and its back up to room temperature it records somewhere between six to nine hours sitting on the desk with sensors and gps on.
Alex
-
Hey Alexander. Sorry for the inconvenience caused to you.
It would be great if you can share the FIT file of the ride where you have faced this issue to our official email address support@hammerhead.io. With this, we would be able to analyze and identify the root cause of the issue.
Also, please share the serial number of your Karoo. You can find it under Settings > About > Status.
-
Hi,
I’ll send a bunch of .fit files to the support mail.
Before that I wanted to look at the data I have, because I wasn’t sure if the charge really jumped.
Short version is that it didn’t. the drain rate increased and it just felt like a sudden drain. My eyes weren’t glued to tiny % number as I didn’t put it on the data screen.
But curiosity struck a bit and i went through a few files today ( you guys probably have better ways to do that):
I used Garmins Java fit2csv from their sdk to convert the files, first loaded them into Excel, but then decided to use Origin to look at charge, voltage and temperature.
I had a ride on the 3rd where the device shut down after ~48mins. Another one on 2nd of December where it gave out after ~50mins and where I rebooted it about 10mins later and it again ran about 50mins before shutting down again.
Then I was fairly sure that I had a recording where it still drained when I reconnected it to a charger, but didn’t find it, most like didn’t press record before. So, I looked a t a ride on the 11th of November where it was not below 0°C. Ride ended regularly after ~2.5h with 85% charge. Because the drain was reduced from the 10%/h that was regular for me before (GPS, Ant+ on with Quarq Powermeter on MTB and Assioma on RR and an Ant+ HR sensor) after a patch sometime around August (?).
Dug out a ride from July 8th with a duration of ~5.5h, nice MTB Summer-ride that ended on 48% charge. The voltage increases with a bit of delay during the ride if temperature increases
When looking through the few pieces of data that I gathered, it looks like the charge doesn’t correlate with the voltage, for 90% there is 3.46V(3rd), 4.03V(July), and 3.91V(Nov). For 50% its 3.32V in Jan and 3.59V in July.
Max Voltage I was a bit over 4.3V. Suggests four cells in series? Shutdown was always around 3.4V which would be in line with the cut off of around 0.8 to 0.9V per cell to protect them from deep discharge.
All that looks like a mixture of battery age, cell voltage calibration and a temperature dependency of the voltage measuring device. I wonder, do you compensate that in the code by putting if S/N=asdf45 then <compensation script for asdf45>?
It seems that you have programmed bit of a ghost after that battery bug a while back (: Other devices are doing quite well. I record all rides in parallel with a Suunto Spartan via BT and is isn’t impressed at all when its cold.
Anyhow, if you can fix this, then its great and I hope it helps other K1 users. Reason I’m not mad is the upcoming K2 and the Spartan (which is also a year older than my K1) that mainly records my rides. Annoyance is less data on BT, especially for the Assioma powermeter as I have quite a problem with left/right balance. But I’ll survive that for the moment q:
I also hope the K2 doesn’t have that problem!
-
I got the same issue, has happened since the beginning (early adopter), got a bit better a year or so after but with the last few updated got bad again.. i got 100% to 0% in a couple of hours and I'm really tired of not being able to ride without data recording the whole ride... is there a possibility to trade in the Karoo 1 for the 2? Can't really go out anymore on bike rides without knowing if I can actually make it home with the thing working anymore.. my friends Garmin's hold for a million hours and that is starting to look like a viable option
-
I had the same problem today. In the beginning of the launch of Karoo this issue was also happening, but solved with an update. Today it was 6-8 degrees outside, quite cold. The battery first acted normal but just like the last graphs 2021-01-03 and 2020-12-02 the charge suddenly got down every 5 seconds with 1% and reported tot switch to battery savings, I switched that on but it continued dropping till it died.
I tried to reboot, but it failed again.
After about 5minutes I tried again and let the screen of just so I could finish my route (I was in the middle of a unknown place), and it hold up for another 2,5 hours till it died. So there was charge! Really strange.
I try now to reset the battery by fully loading it without turning it on. Don't think that will matter.
Maybe it is an bluetooth issue because my Powertap acted strange as well after the shut down and reset. I will try with Ant+ only next ride to see if it helps. Maybe it is the cold. I don't know. Hammerhead do you have an idea??
-
It was the battery reset that did it for my Karoo and it apparently was the battery gauge , I thought I did it before but didnt do it the correct way. The support responded to my ticket back then with the steps below. I did not completely follow step 3 - tuning it on again and again until it is dead like brick. Maybe thats your issue too
steps:
1. Let the battery die (Put it on ride mode till it powers off)
2. Power back on
3. Repeat power-on attempts until it will not turn on (doesn't even show boot animation - 0%)
4.Charge to 100% WITHOUT powering on the Karoo (generally at least 6 hrs, dep. on the charger)
5. Once at 100%, power it on.
Please perform the step 2&3 as it is. It would not be effective if you just power OFF and Power ONAlso, please share the FIT file of the ride after this for us to analyze the ride logs if the above workaround fails.
-
Today it was 6 degrees Celsius outside, the unit gave up after 1,5 hours. Same problem, so I turned it on again, in lowest brightness and battery saving mode so the screen turns off after 30s or so. I made it till home, so it was 1 hour hovering on 1% charge. At home it shut down.
After a few minutes in the warm room I recovered the ride by turning it on (without charging) and I wanted to let it die till it is a brick but the battery warmed up and it is now already 3 hours on with full brightness.... hovering on 1% charge. So there is something wrong with battery management, or the voltage drops so much during the cold ride, that it thinks that the battery is empty.
I will let it die again till it is completely empty and try above again. But it looks like the battery suffers from the cold weather.
-
Ok I fully discharged the battery and today I did a ride, it hold up longer but after 1,5 hours the battery started draining faster again (6 degrees celsius outside), and after 2 hours the battery was gone.
I was an early adopter and I am still very happy with the big screen. Problem is that the K1 is only 2 years old, but there is no warranty anymore.
Anybody tips? Can I replace the battery when I open a ticket? Or maybe a discount on a new unit? Although I find that really a waste of a still good working unit.... It just should last longer then this.
-
Contacted with Hammerhead. The discharging method didn't work for me. After analysis of two .fit files Hammerhead suggested a hard reset of the device. After the hard reset the battery was ok for 1 ride and then again the battery drained. half way a ride. So I contacted Hammerhead again and sent a .fit file of that ride. They concluded that the hard reset didn't fix it because they could see "there have been continuous invalid reboots recorded", so asked me to do it again.
I never did a hard reset or software factory reset in the last 2 years. I am one of the early adopters.
But....
After that last reset the battery looks good again. So hard reset did it for me. It looks like a battery management software problem. I did a ride of more then 3 hours and below the result. Next week a will do a ride of 6 hours so we will see. I am hopefull that it works now.
https://support.hammerhead.io/hc/en-us/articles/360003079393-Performing-a-Hard-Reset-on-your-Karoo
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
12 comments