Serious heat issue with Fuze V2

[Beefy2k]

I've also noticed that the original firmware now says "GOODBYE" when I turn it off; it never used to do this before I installed RB and even after reintroducing the firmware that used to be on the device it still comes up with it.  Weird.

I have a V2 and the goodbye message was always there, both before and after installing RB.  My guess is you just quit paying attention to the screen when the little animation faded away.

this heat is coming from the very bottom left corner whenever the blue ring is on.

You can turn off the blue light in the settings.  Have you tried that to see if it makes a difference in the heat levels?  That info might help them troubleshoot the problem?

I turned off the blue ring on mine and turned down the brightness to almost its lowest level as soon as I installed RB just for battery life so I can not validate your issues.

[cowkleaver]

I can verify that I have seen this same heat issue on my V2.  Whatever is causing the issue, it persists across both RB and OF.  I have tried "reset to factory" and other similar settings in the OF, reflashed the OF, reflashed RB, etc.  and all have had no effect.

When I first noticed this problem I was listening to the radio feature (though I think this is unrelated).  I was also going through the RB settings and playing with Backlight and Wheel Light options.  I do not recall which menu I was in or what the settings were -- all I know is that I was increasing a setting.  While performing this operation I noticed that the LCD started to flicker and the device started to become warm.  I reset.  The screen seems to go black at the times I would expect the backlight to be turning on and becomes visible when I would expect the backlight to be turning off.

As I mentioned before this behavior seems to persist.  The fuze can get very hot now, and the battery is nearly drained.  I'm somewhat reluctant to try and let it charge lest something decide to magic smoke release on me.

Let me know if anyone has any bright ideas, or if I can give any additional info that might help.

Thanks for your efforts.

--edit 1

After some quick charging it seems that changing the wheel light timer to anything but off in RB will cause the LCD to go black when the wheel turns on.

Adjusting the backlight intensity appears to have no effect and I'm beginning to suspect that this lack of control over the backlight intensity may be the best symptom to diagnose with.

--edit 2

As long as the backlight shuts off the device remains cool to the touch.  The fuze is able to charge in RB.  But when in OF the backlight does not turn off and the device becomes warm.


The best way to sum things up are that I no longer seem to have proper control of the backlight intensity, and that when the backlight is on the device appears to start getting hot.

HTH.

--
Kevin

[funman]

Best thing you should do is replace the player, and try to get info on this problem from Sandisk if you can contact them

[heyster]

I have also experienced an overheat issue similar to those described in this thread, but only with Rockbox.  I've been using the Fuze with the original firmware for about a year.  Been using RB for several weeks.  Never experienced an overheat with the OF.

build r28081-100914 on a Fuze v2

Here's the story as much as I can recall...

I was setting up different configs thru several .cfg files.  I already had one I called "default.cfg" with fairly middle-of-the-road settings and had added another with low backlight brightness and low audio volume called "night.cfg".  The wheel light setting was 2 seconds for all of my configs.

Here's where it got interesting...

I was setting up "daylight.cfg" with full backlight brightness for daytime use.  I had used this setting for maybe a minute, picked up the device and felt the intense heat from the back of the Fuze.  I noticed the backlight changing brightness (not what I would call flickering as it was changing every few 100 ms or so) as if could not decide which brightness setting to use.  I fumbled for a few seconds trying to get into the brightness settings, but felt the temperature rising quickly.  As far as I can remember, at no point did the display blank out.

Knowing the damage this could do to the battery (and other components) I immediately powered off the Fuze and let it cool down.  Later on I connected it to my laptop to charge the depleted battery and to restore a good config.

The point of high heat seemed to be in the center-left (looking at the front) of the player.  I can't be dogmatic about that as I was scrambling to get the thing powered off.

Since charging and going back to a less-than-full brightness setting, I've not noticed any fallout.  My intuition tells me that this high-drain and subsequent heat from the battery is related to the full backlight brightness setting.

Based on the talk here, I've set the wheel light to OFF.

I haven't had any issues since this, but I'm hesitant to use a high brightness setting.

[PockyMaster]

Well, I can also testify towards this overheat problem.

I was actually curious one day and decided to ramp up my brightness and wheel light after reading this thread. The heat definitely started building up in the bottom left corner roughly 30 seconds in. I used my lips to check for any temperature differences because they were the most sensitive to temperature changes, and I kept my warm hands away from the back of the device and just used my fingers to scroll, so the lights would stay on, while the player sat on my bed. From there, I backed out as quickly as possible and returned it to regular settings. The screen didn't flicker as I tried this. It only does so while i'm an hour into rockboy, and, that's where crazy things happen.

It not only flickers, but blanks out and sometimes mirrors the visual output from the lcd (Like, b's look like d's). That's when I start freaking out and start wondering if my device is covered by demonic possession in the warranty and frantically restart it in both the OF and rockbox with the same residual effects for roughly 5 minutes.



I guess it's safe to say that I should not be playing games on rockbox for more than an hour just yet.

I know this may sound like a joke with the whole lip temperature check and crazy screen flipping, but I'm dead serious.




Normal Setting for brightness for music, listing, games etc: 3
Scrollwheel light: off
Volume Setting: 6dB (no headphones connected)

FunFact: That's how i found out the fuze's back was made of a coated metal material.
FunFact2: I'm in school for materials engineering.

[fuzerotr]

I too have a heat issue with my Fuze v2 (bought refurbished from Newegg on 02/06/10.)

Installed Rockbox in Sep.  Reinstalled 10/10 or thereabouts, using RockboxUtil (on Ubuntu 10.04LTS.)  While exploring some of the plugin apps (clock then lamp) my screen went black. I rebooted into rockbox and the screen came on momentarily.  Rebooted into Sansa firmware (v2.03.33), same problem.

Screen would go black whenever wheel light was on.  I then:
   1. Drained the battery (OF, started music playing by patiently waiting for wheel light to go off, then using the wheel in small increments.)
   2. Manually reinstalled OF.
   3. Charged  via wallplug adapter.
   4. Rebooted to OF. Problem persisted.
   5. Installed latest Fuze v2 Rockbox as of 10/25 (r28360-101025).
   6. Booted into Rockbox.  Same problem.

Researched Fuze v2 Rockbox manual, found that wheel light could be turned off.  Did so.  I can now navigate as usual (I have display turn off after 10 secs).  However, Fuze gets hot when charging and when backlight or wheel light stays on.  Also, max charge now seems to be around 70%.

I will try charging while rockbox running to see if it still gets hot (while backlight and wheel light are off?)

Just playing music (256kbit mp3) does not cause fuze to get hot, or even warm.

Will post update as I find out more.

[saratoga]

I too have a heat issue with my Fuze v2 (bought refurbished from Newegg on 02/06/10.)

Can you compile?  Trying out some other values for the second argument to ascodec_write_pmu on line 74 of backlight-fuzev2.c might fix your problem.  The last bit must stay 1, but after that increasing number in the first 7 bit should reduce power to the wheel light.  0xF0 for instance should reduce it by a factor of 2 or so.  Not sure if thats the problem, and I don't have a V2 fuze so I have no idea if it'll even do anything

[fuzerotr]

I will try charging while rockbox running to see if it still gets hot (while backlight and wheel light are off?)

Charging with Rockbox running, which keeps backlight and wheel light off, does not heat up the fuze v2.  Last charge percent reached 93%.

I believe that the "lamp" plugin overloaded the LED drivers and damaged them somehow, so that the screen and/or wheel light draw excessive current (?) and cause the fuze to heatup.

However, I can live with this.

WARNING! Trying the "lamp" plugin may have damaged my Fuze v2

[saratoga]

I believe that the "lamp" plugin overloaded the LED drivers and damaged them somehow, so that the screen and/or wheel light draw excessive current (?) and cause the fuze to heatup.

The lamp plugin on the Fuze can't change the LED brightness so that seems unlikely. 

[noco]

Hi,

I have the same issue with my just bought refurbished V2. I set the brightness to 3 and turned the lights round the clickwheel off, but it still heats and the battery drops very fast. With this the Fuze player isn't usable.

Are there any news or fixes for this problem?

EDIT: I now removed rockbox and realized that the player gets also warm when scrolling in the original menu. Is this normal?
What annoyed me most was that the battery drops so fast when scrolling. Needs the battery gauge of a new/refurbished player some time to calibrate?

EDIT2: I just reinstalled rockbox and found out that it heats the player even listening to music with turned off display. And in compared to the OF it's much warmer.. I don't know what's wrong here..


Nico.

[Zander]

Unless you get a smell of electronics overheating from the MircoSD slot I'd say your safe.


By the way this is where I feel the heat on mine, pay no attention to that tiny red circle over those two pins I'm using the recovery picture to describe this.



I'm thinking it's that little CMOS next to the audio jack but I have no way of finding out what it is using the numbers on it.

[noco]

Hi,

sorry for my late answer, I was skiing the last few days.

The problem is that the battery wents empty within 1 hour with rockbox even with the display beeing off and just listening to music. There are now a few options for me:

- buy another refurbished Fuze from itsor

- buy an used Fuze and hope that it works better with Rockbox (question: V1 or V2?)

- buy a new Clip and hope that the battery is tolerable with a plugged in sd-card


Thanks for your help.

[Zander]

Does the gauge say the

[noco]

Hm?

[Zander]

Oh man,

Does the bat. gauge stay in the red?


I've noticed on mine it stays in the red, but never actually dies.

 It jumps up to half, then down to red, then quarter the way full then red, etc.

I think the algorithm for the battery gauge gets screwed up.

I have a question for anyone reading this, how do I turn on the deep charge ?