H300: Wrong battery voltage and mixed up buttons.

[PaulJam]

Hi,

my H300 seems to be developing a strange hardware issue:
When i started the player the boot screen reported a voltage of about 3.5V even though the battery was fully charged (4.1V) and various buttons were malfunctioning (e.g. RIGHT acted like the DOWN button, the DOWN button acted like LEFT, STOP didn't work at all, etc.). Then i reseted the player and booted the OF by inserting the charger and the OF displayed the message "Please remove external battery pack" (it should usually go into charging mode). Pressing PLAY booted the firmware, but the buttons were also mixed up. as soon as i removed the charger the device shut down due to low battery.

Then i opened the player to see if there is something obviously wrong (ballooning battery or something similar) but i didn't see anything, so i assembled it again and tried to boot. The boot screen reported 4.12V and the buttons were also working correctly again. So everything was fine.

Then the next day it happened again. This time i just removed the back plate and tried to boot and it was fine again.

So now i am a little bit anxious that it will happen again and remain a permanent state. I'm not sure what is causing it or how it magically fixed itself.

My best theory i can come up with is that the battery voltage and the buttons that are connected to the resistor network are read by the ADC in the UDA1380 chip, and a few years ago i had to replace that chip. I'm not really good at soldering and this was my first SMD experience, so could it be that after maybe 2 or 3 years one of the soldering joints can become bad and cause such behavior? [EDIT] Well, scratch that. I got that mixed up - the battery and button reading is done in the PCF50606 chip, not the UDA1380.

Can anyone who has more knowledge of that player think of something that would cause such problems and tell me if/how this can be fixed?

There is a thread describing similar problems at MisticRiver but unfortunately no solution:
http://www.misticriver.net/forums/iriver-h3xx-series-h320-h340/59216-h320-low-battery-buttons-working-wrong.html

[dYna]

Sorry for bumping such an old thread, but i have the same problem now, and wanted to ask, if you have found a solution.
Or maybe someone else has an idea.
Thanks!

[peteswensson]

I once had what may have been the same problem on my H300 -- button presses giving the wrong results.  I ended up taking the device all apart until I got down to the front plate and its cluster of pressure switches under the plastic buttons.  I blew on the parts to get rid of dust.  (I couldn't actually see any dust, so I was acting on either faith or desperation.)  I put it all back together, and it stopped misbehaving.  It was kind of like having a car that's being hard to start; eventually it starts, and you wonder whether what you did really fixed it, or whether the improvement in behavior was just random.

[dYna]

Thanks for your reply!
I tried that too, but it didnt work, and it does not explain the strange behaviour of the battery indicator. (At least i think that.)
Sometimes it works, and when it works the battery is at ~75%.
I reboot, buttons act strange and battery is at 0%.

But i will try to dedust again...

[rickbox]

Interesting, the same thing that happened to the original poster happened to my H320 (de facto a "H330") yesterday, including

* the way the buttons didn't work (no Stop, Right was Down etc)
* that the behavior went away after taking the thing (partly) apart - and that it returned the next day
* strange battery indicator similiar to what was desrcibed by dYna - had it on the power adapter the whole night and it would show 6% - or some high value like 80% after a hard reset (only way to turn the thing off without a Stop button)
* I remember getting the  message about the "etxernal battery pack" once, too

A few hours ago I disassembled the thing more or less completely and also disconnected the battery (had to set the time/date again in Rockbox afterwards).
So far it works and the battery indicator is showing 95% .
It will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow or after recharging it the next time.


And some random thoughts:

I wonder if the stronger 2200mAh of unknown-ebay-origins replacement battery of could have something to do with this?
I had been thinking about replacing it in a couple of months because it had developed  the same behavior the original one showed during its last months until I finally had to replace it:
after booting the battery indicator would show something like 45% and then slowly climb up another 20% or so over the next couple of minutes; for example, the "95%" mentioned above were only "86%" right after the start.
Could a dying battery mess things up that way?

Or maybe it could be an insulation issue?
I accidentally dropped the player *very* hard 2-3 times during the last few days so something might have slightly moved inside and my H320 has been a bit iffy insulation-wise in the past (at least after replacing hard drive and battery; I don't remember, but I think the 2200-battery might have been slightly thicker than the original one):

* yesterday I started unscrewing the case once while the player was still running and I could actually hear a humming sound in the earphones when the 100%-metal screwdriver touched the screws (ear-phones were connected to the Line-Out jack; the earphone jack produces some low noise that is noticeable with the low volume I use when listening-until-I-fall-asleep).
* after replacing the battery (IIRC) I could always feel current in the silverish frame around the buttons when the player was on the charger (I had to put insulation tape over the buttons to not get mildly zapped each time - I was too lazy to (dis)assemble everything again )
* when using very low volume, I  could tell if the player was plugged in or if it was running on battery because in the first case  there would be a noticeable humming sound in the earphones