Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Hi I just picked up a Vagabond Mini Lithium from a friend of mine. The unit is less than 5 months old.
He has not used this for the last few months. I brought this home and plugged the charger into the unit.
The charger showed a Red illumination and after 3 hrs it turned itself to Green.

I have unplugged the charging unit and turned the On/Off switch to the On position.
The Orange LED by the USB came on and turned to green and then turned off.
No gage LEDs are coming on.

Can you please enlight me with some info here. Is something is faulty here? Please advice.

Thanks,

MTH

I assume the lights come on and then go off almost immediately? Make sure the battery is installed securely. Release it using the button on the back/bottom, and re-seat it. If so, then there is a problem with the unit, either in the battery or the inverter. If the unit is under a year old, it is still under warranty. If out of warranty we can repair the inverter, or a new battery can be purchased.

I made the big mistake of not reading the instructions for mine and killed the battery simply from my storage procedures - it's easy to do with this type of battery tech. Read through them and if you suspect it was not maintained properly try a new batt.

We were originally told by the battery manufacturer that discharged batteries could be stored almost indefinitely without re charging.

They have now concluded that, even when not connected, the small current draw from the safety controllers in Lithium batteries can self discharge the battery to the point of permanent damage if stored in the discharged condition for long periods of time.

So the current recommendations are to recharge the battery within a week or so after discharging


This is a somewhat different situation than exists with lead acid batteries, which begin to sulfate quickly even if stored below about 1/2 charge state, and within hours of storage completely discharged.

The manufacturer also informs us that the useful life of VML type batteries is only two to three years even when stored properly, whether they are used or not.

We are developing solutions to all these issues right now.

Note the same issues are present with the Photogenic ION, which is a direct copy of the VML.

Is there any news on this?

Is anything planned to address these issues for existing VML customers?