So in mid to late September of last year I had ordered a blue brick battery to power my GBFans light and sound kits for my proton pack, I received it in October just before Halloween and managed to get everything hooked up and in working order in time for trick or treating with my kids. Unfortunately that same night my pack took a tumble to the ground and damages occurred, mostly to the thrower. So due to this and procrastination & paranoia of doing more damage during repairs, I didn’t do much for repairs in the last few months so I also didn’t play around with the pack as much as I would have if the damages hadn’t occurred, but I did keep charging the battery when it would run out of juice and everything worked just fine when I would turn it on.
Last week when I had free time in the evenings after work I finally started work on my thrower repairs, I chose last week to finally make my repairs so my pack would be ready and working for Friday where I had planned to meet up with other Edmonton area Busters from the Alberta Ghostbusters at a theatre for opening night of Ghostbusters '16 to do promo and hang out. So Mon, Tues & Wed went by and everything was working and things were ok. Thurs rolls around and it appeared as though my brick had run out of juice but I didn’t need power for what I was doing so I proceeded to do what I needed to do, when I was done I plugged it into my charger.
Friday after work I unplug the charger make some last minute tweaks to make sure the gun is good to go then I go to fire her up, I hit the power switch… and nothing happens, toggle the switch off for a 10 count and try again…still nothing, repeat 1 more timed the result is the same. I take the gun box cover off and open up the pack and start checking for loose or disconnected wires, but everything seems to check out so try powering up again and still nothing. Go over things again a couple more times and no change, so I decide to hook the charger back up to it and she turns on, the indicator light on the charger is red, just like the night before when I plugged it in, meaning that the battery is charging, but after 10+ hours shouldn’t the battery be charged? Shut it off, unplug the charger, try turning it on again and nothing. Played with it for a while trying to get it to work and ended up missing opening night with my fellow Busters.
Here we are a couple of days later and I still haven’t got it to work unless its hooked up to the charger. I disconnected the battery from the sound board and plugged in the charger and the indicator light is green meaning the battery should be charged, so I let it sit that way a couple of hours unplug the charger & re connect the sound board, try turning it on and nothing. Plug the charger back in with everything still connected, indicator light is red and the pack powers on, shut off the power let it charge a couple of hours, unplug charger flip the switch and no power.
Has anybody else in the community had this problem? If so is there a way to fix it? Is it a problem with the battery or maybe the sound board? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Do you have a voltmeter? Sounds like you need to start tracing where you have power and where you don’t. Start at the battery. Then the next thing, probably a switch. Then the board. Keep going until you discover where the power is out.
If you don’t have a voltmeter, you can use a 12v LED but you’ll need to pay attention to the polarity (positive to positive). If it lights up, you have power.
Sounds like a dead cell in the battery. Would explain why you’re not getting enough juice to power the board, but it still powers up on pass through. Is the battery puffy at all?
Yeah, I’m pretty certain I’m going to have to replace the battery. I was tinkering with it a little today and noticed that the red light for the on/off switch on the battery itself doesn’t turn on unless its plugged into the charger, I told my wife that and she said that the battery is most likely dead if that light doesn’t come on without the battery being plugged in.
No, there is no puffiness to the battery.
Thank you for your suggestion. Unfortunately all things seem to point to the battery needing to be replaced, but as a last ditch effort I will give that a try cause you never know right?!
Thanks for your input guys! It may not have been the answer I was looking for, but I appreciate you taking the time to read my post and leave some feed back.
So I’ve come to terms with the fact that I need a new battery for my pack, so since I got my first one on eBay from a seller out of China I decided to go that route again but unlike last time this go around customs stopped it and sent it back to the seller. This took me by surprise as I only bought my first battery around the same time 1 year ago, and there was no problem it getting to me then. So I asked members of the Alberta Ghostbusters if any of them also used a brick to power their packs and if they knew of anywhere local to get one from, turns out those who responded also got theirs on eBay from China also a year or longer ago and didn’t encounter any customs issues either. Jay (PssdffJay here on the forums) was the only one not to get his off eBay but the site he got his from also shipped from China, so since it was a different site that quoted a faster delivery time frame I ordered one from them to see it would get to me. Unfortunately it was the same result, customs stopped it and sent it back to the seller.
The guys from the group also recommended checking local stores that sell CCTV cameras and stuff because these bricks are advertised as being a power source for them as well, but I have yet to have any luck that way either. So now I put it to the forum community, besides the blue brick batteries can anybody out there suggest another reliable option that I can look into to power my Pack? As always any kind of feedback is appreciated.
The best place for you to look, is places that sell drones. They are what typically use these batteries. Doesn’t the west ed mall have a decent hobby shop? Might be worth checking if they have a website.
I haven’t been to West Ed in a while, there used to be this hobby store called Kites & Other Delights in there, but they went out of business a couple of years ago. I know of a couple of hobby shops around the city and I didn’t really think to check them out.
