New Abbott Navigator Nightmare
And the saga continues.
About three days ago, my Navigator spontaneously rebooted itself several times in a row. Of course as a result I lost a sensor, but it was also a very odd behavior; there seemed to be no issues at all with the hardware. I opened and moved batteries around and replaced them and it became stable again.
Seemed to be an electrical connection problem. But where?
Yesterday it did it again. I again opened the battery compartment this time for a closer look, and an obvious culprit quickly emerged. One of the four battery contacts seemed a bit awkwardly placed, twisted at a weird angle. So I poked at it. It popped out like a jack-in-the-box.
Aha!
My first thought was - crazy glue. A small enough amount should bond it back to its contact plate, without killing conductivity too badly. It worked for about an hour but then went haywire again. While the battery contact was stable, it seemed like conductivity wasn't good enough.
I honestly wasn't thinking well by that time and last night I applied even more superglue. It bonded alright, but now there was no conductivity at all; the device simply went dead. Yes, yes, it's obvious, but I was involved in an intense and heated emotional discussion while dealing with this and my head wasn't screwed on straight.
I finally got back home and got to tinkering again. Took me 40 minutes to scrape off most of the crazy glue and put the contact back on (loosely, not bonded), just to see if the device would turn back on. It did, and stayed that way through the night. But that was not a good solution; the merest bump would send the contact moving again and I'd be back to the same problem.
Of course you know the answer. So I went and bought a soldering pen, and on the way home stopped at a shop and let a professional do it for me instead. He did get the contact and plate soldered well, but a new problem emerged; there was a big blob of flux now, which made it hard to fit the battery in.
So I got home, used my soldering pen to soften some of it up, and scrape it out. Then I pushed the battery in, closed the compartment (it was all bent and the like because the blob was still pretty big), and the device came to life. Yay! so I put a new sensor in and went on my way.
Less than an hour later the thing died again. I'm glad I was looking at it all the time because it was warm to the touch. I immediately opened the battery compartment to pull the batteries out. One of them was HOT, so hot it burned me. Ouch.
I cooled it off enough to be able to examine it, and sure enough, the battery wrapper was punctured in two locations from the flux blob, essentially shorting it onto itself and causing it to discharge at a high rate. Hence the heat. I believe that if I had not caught it then, 2-3 minutes later it would have fried the entire device too.
So I went home and went to work again. This time I shaved and pried and sliced off as much flux as I could to flatten it out, then fit new batteries in. At this point I was kinda wondering if the Nav was dead after all it had gone through and it's inherent finickiness. Some of the plastic around the battery compartment was now melted and messed up, it ain't pretty in there.
Lo and behold, it came back to life without complaint. The compartment door closed easily, and I now seem to have a working Nav again. How sad that because of Abbott's astoundingly poor customer service* I have to resort to such lengths to revive my unit. And what a testament to the strength of the underlying technology that I am so loyal to it even so.
Please Nav, live. Live until the new ones get to the US. Live.
* this Nav is under warranty but they can't replace it because they don't have any units in stock, as it has been since February and will last at least through December; all this while the Nav is currently selling and easily available in Europe.
About three days ago, my Navigator spontaneously rebooted itself several times in a row. Of course as a result I lost a sensor, but it was also a very odd behavior; there seemed to be no issues at all with the hardware. I opened and moved batteries around and replaced them and it became stable again.
Seemed to be an electrical connection problem. But where?
Yesterday it did it again. I again opened the battery compartment this time for a closer look, and an obvious culprit quickly emerged. One of the four battery contacts seemed a bit awkwardly placed, twisted at a weird angle. So I poked at it. It popped out like a jack-in-the-box.
Aha!
My first thought was - crazy glue. A small enough amount should bond it back to its contact plate, without killing conductivity too badly. It worked for about an hour but then went haywire again. While the battery contact was stable, it seemed like conductivity wasn't good enough.
I honestly wasn't thinking well by that time and last night I applied even more superglue. It bonded alright, but now there was no conductivity at all; the device simply went dead. Yes, yes, it's obvious, but I was involved in an intense and heated emotional discussion while dealing with this and my head wasn't screwed on straight.
I finally got back home and got to tinkering again. Took me 40 minutes to scrape off most of the crazy glue and put the contact back on (loosely, not bonded), just to see if the device would turn back on. It did, and stayed that way through the night. But that was not a good solution; the merest bump would send the contact moving again and I'd be back to the same problem.
Of course you know the answer. So I went and bought a soldering pen, and on the way home stopped at a shop and let a professional do it for me instead. He did get the contact and plate soldered well, but a new problem emerged; there was a big blob of flux now, which made it hard to fit the battery in.
So I got home, used my soldering pen to soften some of it up, and scrape it out. Then I pushed the battery in, closed the compartment (it was all bent and the like because the blob was still pretty big), and the device came to life. Yay! so I put a new sensor in and went on my way.
Less than an hour later the thing died again. I'm glad I was looking at it all the time because it was warm to the touch. I immediately opened the battery compartment to pull the batteries out. One of them was HOT, so hot it burned me. Ouch.
I cooled it off enough to be able to examine it, and sure enough, the battery wrapper was punctured in two locations from the flux blob, essentially shorting it onto itself and causing it to discharge at a high rate. Hence the heat. I believe that if I had not caught it then, 2-3 minutes later it would have fried the entire device too.
So I went home and went to work again. This time I shaved and pried and sliced off as much flux as I could to flatten it out, then fit new batteries in. At this point I was kinda wondering if the Nav was dead after all it had gone through and it's inherent finickiness. Some of the plastic around the battery compartment was now melted and messed up, it ain't pretty in there.
Lo and behold, it came back to life without complaint. The compartment door closed easily, and I now seem to have a working Nav again. How sad that because of Abbott's astoundingly poor customer service* I have to resort to such lengths to revive my unit. And what a testament to the strength of the underlying technology that I am so loyal to it even so.
Please Nav, live. Live until the new ones get to the US. Live.
* this Nav is under warranty but they can't replace it because they don't have any units in stock, as it has been since February and will last at least through December; all this while the Nav is currently selling and easily available in Europe.
posted by Blinkered at 12:26 PM
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