Equinox Battery Life Test

[Sinclair]

3 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

You can either run the detector from an external charging device or charge it from an external charging device, but you cannot do both at once. They are awkwardly saying that if you run the machine while attached to a charging device charging is going to take longer....... because you are running the machine and not charging it!

If that's the case, it's really written mistakable .. at least for my understanding.

[Steve Herschbach]

I won’t argue with that 

[Steve Herschbach]

OK, I may have been wrong. A question on another thread caused me to try charging/running while powered up and it appeared to be doing both at the same time. Here was my comment on the other thread...

"Hmmm.... it is possible something has changed. Before it was quite clear that Equinox is either running off an external source, or charging off an external source, but not both at once. Now, if the detector is running and I connect an external source, the detector keeps running and it appears to be charging also if I can trust the charging light. I can connect while running and disconnect and the detector keeps running. It appears to automatically go to external power if available, and maybe also be using any excess to charge. It may be I used a lower amperage adapter before, and there may be a point where the amps gets low enough that it must choose - charge or run detector?

More experimentation required. Everyone is super busy at Minelab for some reason right now so I am not bothering them with questions for the time being."

[Steve Herschbach]

I can now confirm that if you run the detector off an external power source, excess power will be used to charge the machine while running. If there is just enough power to run the machine, then charging will not occur simultaneous to running off the external source. No, I don’t know where that tipping point occurs in terms of charging amps.

You read it right Sinclair - I am sorry if my “old and out of date knowledge” caused any confusion, but now we both know for sure.

[Sinclair]

Thanks for the heads-up, Steve.

I think I'll have to get a powerbank that delivers some more juice than my old ones..

Did you get that AA powerbank in the meantime?

[Steve Herschbach]

Yeah, I reported back on it on that thread. 800ma will not quite trigger charging. The charging light flashes in a weak fashion but nothing is happening. I am guessing the cutoff is around 1.0 amp? A power pack made up of 8 AA batteries would no doubt do the trick. Since I charge every night and have never had a problem however I am not pursuing that aspect much anymore. It was an interesting experiment but from a practical perspective not something I need personally worry about.