Thread: Garmin rino 650

I need 2x new batteries for my rino's and was after some opinions on the garmin replacement battery packs vs the aa alkaline packs, and if the latter, which type of batteries have people had the most success with, just the single use or rechargeable... they recommend to not use lithium ion aa batteries but the lithium ones are ok, or if the alkaline rechargeable's are good enough

I believe that the AA battery packs - Yes I own one - only allow the radio to max 2 watt not the 5 watt from the lithium batteries.
Do you have some faulty lithium batteries? I may be able to help fix them for you?

The rechargeable battery packs can be repacked quite easily with the right gear - they take a 18650 unprotected cell same as what's in cordless tool or laptop battery packs, two of them. Apparently people who have repacked them themselves with new cells have suggested they have managed to get a useful capacity increase by going to the highest capacity cell they can find.

Yeah, got 2 of the original 650 units, they won't turn on after charging all night, so I tried a mate's battery in both mine and they both turned on fine so need a replacement battery. Was just wondering what the best way to go is

Try leaving them on the charger for longer, first. Think mine took 18 hours before it started showing life again after sitting for ages. Now I store it either with battery out or paper blocking the terminals, seems the way to go.

If they discharge too deeply the inbuilt protection circuit won't allow the charge current in. It's a safety setup to prevent excessive heating during charging as the inrush current can be quite high at deeply discharged states. You might be able to trick it into accepting a charge and it might come sort of right, but generally at that point they are damaged to some level. Google tricking the lithium ion batteries and getting them to accept a charge - I've tried it a couple of times but without much joy. Had a few come back to life but never as good as before.

Google Garmin Rino battery fault.
I had it with a near new one, which would hold charge. It was fixed by a simple software update.
Was a while, ago now, but from memory I’m connected the Rinomto Basecamp, ran an update and has been all good since.