Brick Bricked?

[Mike Yonts]

I have a Red Brick that had always worked great, until I left it on my (powered down) Epic overnight. I think that the little power LED on the right side of the camera drained the Brick all the way. When I push in the button on the side of the battery, the first red LCD flashes. And when I put it on the Red charger, the charger LED flashes orange, fast, for about thirty seconds and then flashes red, and slower, for about a minute. Then it repeats the entire cycle. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I put the Brick on another V-mount charger, and it sat in pre-charge mode for quite a while and then displayed a Time Out message. The battery doesn't get hot, or produce burning odors.

Does anybody know if draining a battery in this way (if that is what happened) permanently trashes it? From the searching I've done on RedUser, it doesn't look like there are a lot of great options for repair.

[Michael Zeleny]

I have a Red Brick that had always worked great, until I left it on my (powered down) Epic overnight. I think that the little power LED on the right side of the camera drained the Brick all the way.

I leave my Red Brick on my powered-down Scarlet-X overnight, for many nights in a row. I never had them drained all the way.

[ericyoung]

I would try the brick on the charger several times. When very discharged below a certain voltage, the charger has to be very careful charging for safety reasons. But to test the state of the battery it initially applies a low charging rate which after several attempts may bring the charge up enough for normal charging.

[Mike Yonts]

Thanks, guys...interesting that maybe it doesn't have anything to do with the camera draining the battery–I don't think I'm going to try to replicate it with another battery!

I like the logic of putting it on the charger several times; I'll give that a try.

[Tony Lorentzen]

Hey Mike. The batteries have internal electronics with protection circuits that may have raised a "flag" in it. Your battery probably just needs a reset, which can be performed at a service centre with the proper tools in place.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I leave my bricks attached all the time. No appreciable battery drain.

I think the contacts would corrode before that little LED drained a brick. :)

[Mike Yonts]

Whatever caused it, nothing is reviving it. I don't think there's anybody around here who can work on it. So I'm trying to decide if it's worth sending it to Red, with whatever shipping Lithium batteries involves. It's about 3 & 1/2 years old.

[Dave Weber]

From the charger manual:

In the case of a battery temporarily not accepting any charge (i.e. an overheated battery) the charger will retry every minute. In this case the charger flashes red indicating a temporary failure.

If it were a total failure the red light would be solid.

[Mike Yonts]

I know, I don't think there's that much wrong with it. Too bad there's not a tiny "hard reboot" button somewhere on it...

[Mike Yonts]

I finally sent this Brick to Ritter Battery after seeing a post here on RedUser. He diagnosed a cold solder joint on the control board and fixed it for a very reasonable price. It works great and I'm happy not to have a useless battery sitting around!