My UGO's battery meter decided to go wonky with one dead LED and the rest dim yesterday. Well, the rest except for the first one on the meter - which would be as dim as the others "in use", but be the only one at full brightness while charging, turning the mildly annoying charging "animation" into an even more annoying BLINK.... BLINK.... BLINK.... when not squinting into it to see that the remaining working LEDs were lighting dimly.
Of course, aside from this cosmetic issue it was working just fine, so I had to press my luck and try the ol' "short it and see if that cuts power to the circuit and actually fixes anything, while hoping it doesn't explode because this is an idiotic thing to do" trick.
The answer, of course, is that shorting it does not even succeed in cutting power to the meter whatsoever, but even a quick press does result in a smell of "magic smoke" escaping (not the good kind) and a disturbingly warm battery connector.
...so I've turned a good, month-old battery with an annoying glitch into a battery that's been abused in a dangerous way and blinks angrily 30+ times while refusing to power any load. With little more than a month of use out of it, go me.
Don't short these models! It's a dumb idea anyway, kids!
[This does make me suspect my earlier assertion that my streak of bad-luck atomizers were failing short was baloney - or else they shorted so very briefly before failing open as to trigger that long-blinks pattern without doing the damage my paperclip and button press did. I also notice it may give preemptive warning by blinking the button LED 3 times the moment the connector is shorted, before you even touch the button - to warn you you're about to burn it out if you touch the button, apparently.]
These seem to be manufactured by Shenzen Topgreen Industrial Co., Ltd., E-Cigarette,Electronic Cigarette,Health Cigarette Manufacturer,Supplier,Factory - Shenzhen Topgreen Industrial Co.,Ltd. , who also make the KGO, which is probably the same battery - though maybe that one lacks both the USB charging tip and an LED meter that can fail and make a mammal crazy.
I got the battery as part of a kit for a crazy price on closeout from a forum vendor who was strongarmed by Joye to stop stocking clones - actually it was actually already a replacement for the DoA battery in the kit that I was musing about attempting to repair in an old thread [still haven't tried it, if anyone can link me to an example teardown for getting these big batteries apart nondestructively/explosively please do] - so I ain't gonna bug the vendor who already had to replace it once. For the heck of it, I put in an email to Shenzen Topgreen asking if I can get any love, and if I actually get a response I'll let everyone know here.
...
No idea what caused the meter to lose a LED/fail like that. It was working when I put it on to charge, and I think when taken off the charger; I only noticed halfway through the morning when I went to check if it was running low or if I'd just flooded an atomizer again. It's taken its share of drops in the month I was using it, but clearly none of those did it in -immediately-... just bad luck or one flaky component, I guess. With the "second" LED in the meter out, the first would blink at full brightness when lit alone, but once the graph tried to "grow" whatever failed to take out the second LED was sinking or blocking enough current to make the first as dim as the others. Resulting in the BLINK.. BLINK.. BLINK.. pattern distracting the heck out of me at my work desk.
If "strongarmed" is a little harsh up there, my only beef with Joye is that, while wedging the cloners out of the market, they keep putting "regular" kits up for sale rather than letting the USB charging/passthrough tip become standard (I'm not even sure if I've ever seen a USB-tip kit, or if I have they've been crazy rare and at a scary markup). Charging is the most tedious and "un-cigarette-like" aspect of e-smorking, so it's a real disservice to make it difficult and expensive for "switchers" to use the convenient USB connector from the start. A dead battery for an experienced user is a minor inconvenience, but a dead battery for someone who's trying to switch and doesn't have spares is a "Screw this, I'm going to put this in the cupboard and light one up." (I could comment on the lack of update to the 510 PCC after all these years - yes it's a "classic", so how about keeping the 'classic' and selling one with a lid that stays closed and won't snag on your pocket alongside? - but I'm already too far off-topic here.)
And that said, this did kick me to go find a deal on a couple of the big 1000mAh-ish "Ego-T" batteries, since I loved my Ego USB in the first place and snagged the UGOs just because I could, and because the 600mAh-ish Ego was all scraped up and starting to weaken after about a year in use. Hopefully the new batteries won't have the logo sandblasted all over the side, although I bet they do - I'll happily *tell* people what I'm using but I don't want to pay to be a billboard, sheesh.
PS: Extra factoid - for those wondering, with a LED clearomizer, UGOs don't visibly do any PWM magic, unlike the official Joyes which clearly strobelight. My sad lot of atomizers were popping like crazy on both kinds, so my atomizer issue wasn't dependent on that. No particular difference in performance was noticed.
Of course, aside from this cosmetic issue it was working just fine, so I had to press my luck and try the ol' "short it and see if that cuts power to the circuit and actually fixes anything, while hoping it doesn't explode because this is an idiotic thing to do" trick.
The answer, of course, is that shorting it does not even succeed in cutting power to the meter whatsoever, but even a quick press does result in a smell of "magic smoke" escaping (not the good kind) and a disturbingly warm battery connector.
...so I've turned a good, month-old battery with an annoying glitch into a battery that's been abused in a dangerous way and blinks angrily 30+ times while refusing to power any load. With little more than a month of use out of it, go me.
Don't short these models! It's a dumb idea anyway, kids!
[This does make me suspect my earlier assertion that my streak of bad-luck atomizers were failing short was baloney - or else they shorted so very briefly before failing open as to trigger that long-blinks pattern without doing the damage my paperclip and button press did. I also notice it may give preemptive warning by blinking the button LED 3 times the moment the connector is shorted, before you even touch the button - to warn you you're about to burn it out if you touch the button, apparently.]
These seem to be manufactured by Shenzen Topgreen Industrial Co., Ltd., E-Cigarette,Electronic Cigarette,Health Cigarette Manufacturer,Supplier,Factory - Shenzhen Topgreen Industrial Co.,Ltd. , who also make the KGO, which is probably the same battery - though maybe that one lacks both the USB charging tip and an LED meter that can fail and make a mammal crazy.
I got the battery as part of a kit for a crazy price on closeout from a forum vendor who was strongarmed by Joye to stop stocking clones - actually it was actually already a replacement for the DoA battery in the kit that I was musing about attempting to repair in an old thread [still haven't tried it, if anyone can link me to an example teardown for getting these big batteries apart nondestructively/explosively please do] - so I ain't gonna bug the vendor who already had to replace it once. For the heck of it, I put in an email to Shenzen Topgreen asking if I can get any love, and if I actually get a response I'll let everyone know here.
...
No idea what caused the meter to lose a LED/fail like that. It was working when I put it on to charge, and I think when taken off the charger; I only noticed halfway through the morning when I went to check if it was running low or if I'd just flooded an atomizer again. It's taken its share of drops in the month I was using it, but clearly none of those did it in -immediately-... just bad luck or one flaky component, I guess. With the "second" LED in the meter out, the first would blink at full brightness when lit alone, but once the graph tried to "grow" whatever failed to take out the second LED was sinking or blocking enough current to make the first as dim as the others. Resulting in the BLINK.. BLINK.. BLINK.. pattern distracting the heck out of me at my work desk.
If "strongarmed" is a little harsh up there, my only beef with Joye is that, while wedging the cloners out of the market, they keep putting "regular" kits up for sale rather than letting the USB charging/passthrough tip become standard (I'm not even sure if I've ever seen a USB-tip kit, or if I have they've been crazy rare and at a scary markup). Charging is the most tedious and "un-cigarette-like" aspect of e-smorking, so it's a real disservice to make it difficult and expensive for "switchers" to use the convenient USB connector from the start. A dead battery for an experienced user is a minor inconvenience, but a dead battery for someone who's trying to switch and doesn't have spares is a "Screw this, I'm going to put this in the cupboard and light one up." (I could comment on the lack of update to the 510 PCC after all these years - yes it's a "classic", so how about keeping the 'classic' and selling one with a lid that stays closed and won't snag on your pocket alongside? - but I'm already too far off-topic here.)
And that said, this did kick me to go find a deal on a couple of the big 1000mAh-ish "Ego-T" batteries, since I loved my Ego USB in the first place and snagged the UGOs just because I could, and because the 600mAh-ish Ego was all scraped up and starting to weaken after about a year in use. Hopefully the new batteries won't have the logo sandblasted all over the side, although I bet they do - I'll happily *tell* people what I'm using but I don't want to pay to be a billboard, sheesh.
PS: Extra factoid - for those wondering, with a LED clearomizer, UGOs don't visibly do any PWM magic, unlike the official Joyes which clearly strobelight. My sad lot of atomizers were popping like crazy on both kinds, so my atomizer issue wasn't dependent on that. No particular difference in performance was noticed.
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