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MVP Panels locking up on low battery
DHawthorne
Posts: 4,584
in AMX Hardware
I have a customer who keeps his MVP-8400 on the night table by his bed with an overhead projector. His habit is to watch whatever it is he is watching at night with the MVP alongside of him in the bed, and when he wants to sleep, he shuts it down and just flops the panel on the table without docking it. The following day, when the housekeeper comes around to tidy up, she puts the panel in the dock, only rarely getting it docked properly. The batteries discharge enough that the panel becomes entirely unresponsive, and will not wake up even if you plug it in or dock it. The only thing that works is to comnpletely remove the batteries from the panel, then replace them. At that point it can run plugged in and the batteries will charge properly. Especikally in light of how difficult it is to even get the silly battery cover off, I find this unaceptable.
I had previously set the shutdown timer to zero because this customer did not like waiting for the panel to restart when he wanted to wake it up. I re-enabled it; it's better that than a dead panel. I spent some time with the housekeeper instructing her how to make sure the panel was properly docked. This may or may not keep the problem from arising again with this customer; I tend to bet that someone will find a way to knock the thing out again.
I recall having a conversation with Tech Support about this many moons ago, and, as I recall, the reason for the lockup was the batteries themselves go into a protected state when discharged too deeply. I have no problem with that; I still have nightmares about the old Viewpoint battery issues and panels that would never take a charge. However, I do think there needs to be a more graceful way to reset batteries from a protected state. When these things go dead, they really go dead. There ought to be a way to kickstart them without pulling the batteries completely out. I can't even ask my customers to try it themselves - it's that difficult to open the hatch without mangling the plastic. I need to make a site visit when this happens.
I had previously set the shutdown timer to zero because this customer did not like waiting for the panel to restart when he wanted to wake it up. I re-enabled it; it's better that than a dead panel. I spent some time with the housekeeper instructing her how to make sure the panel was properly docked. This may or may not keep the problem from arising again with this customer; I tend to bet that someone will find a way to knock the thing out again.
I recall having a conversation with Tech Support about this many moons ago, and, as I recall, the reason for the lockup was the batteries themselves go into a protected state when discharged too deeply. I have no problem with that; I still have nightmares about the old Viewpoint battery issues and panels that would never take a charge. However, I do think there needs to be a more graceful way to reset batteries from a protected state. When these things go dead, they really go dead. There ought to be a way to kickstart them without pulling the batteries completely out. I can't even ask my customers to try it themselves - it's that difficult to open the hatch without mangling the plastic. I need to make a site visit when this happens.
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Must be a pretty big night table to hold a projector...
- Chip
Heh, for some reason I thought I should mention it was an overhead projector, but no, it's not on the table, it's hanging on the ceiling over the bed. There's no way I could sleep with that kind of arrangement, but to each his own...