@jcisbell: This is pretty unambiguous:
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This is true for OPNS aids and and the early More firmware but after I believe More firmware 1.2.0 More aids will not start up once fully charged
@cvkemp: Itās late here, Chuck. Iāll check it out tomorrow. Thanks.
Yes it is but it is not what happens in my case. I can make a video showing how it works with mine in you are interested. If so, how should I make that available?
@jcisbell: Please, donāt be offended, but I am not that driven to explore the characteristics of the charger. I know how to operate mine such that my aids are always charged when I wake up in the morning. Because I always power my charger by a battery pack, power outages/interruptions arenāt an issue. I charge my brick once a week, and weāre good to go again.
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Not at all. No offense taken or intended. I always enjoy discussing technical anomalies.
For those of you with the smart charger, have you tested how many charges you get before the charger needs to be charged? I did decide to go with the smart charger (knowing that there could potentially be battery issues down the road). I picked it up on Thursday, charged it to ensure it was fully charged and then unplugged it. I used it every night since then (so 5 nights so far) and I still have three green LEDs. Wondering if it is going to drop rapidly from āfullā three green LEDs to noneā¦ Either way, five + and counting is better than I expected (granted it is brand new)
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@Chirp: For how many hours a day are you wearing your hearing aids?
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@SpudGunner Iāve actually been keeping track, because I am interested in the battery life. For each of those days I wore them between 14 and 17 hours, and they were between 18-35% battery remaining when I took them out and put them in the charger. And they are 100% charged in the mornings.
@Chirp: wow, Chirp! That charger of yours is holding a fantastic charge, then. I havenāt fooled around with mine, yet.
@Chirp ā Thanks for sharing your test result with us. If you can, after the Smart Charger can no longer provide anymore charge (or maybe until all 3 LEDs stop lighting up), can you keep doing the same testing and monitoring for another cycle or two of trying to see how many full charges you can deliver to the HAs? Itād be interesting to see if you can get the same amount of charge cycles on the HAs 3 times in a row (meaning going from full charge to empty then replenish and go again to empty then replenish and go again to empty on the Smart Charger battery, 3 times). This is just to see if its performance is consistent, or if the first one or two times are āhoneymoonā period then eventually it settles down to 3 HA charge cycles before the Smart Battery needs to be replenished.
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@Volusiano: This is a valid point: I remember my More1 rechargeable HAs were holding a charge for an insanely ling period of time just before they āwent Southā.
Best to run the battries in for a few full cycles, as you suggest ā¦
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An update, in case you are still interested:
I have now had the smart charger for 7 weeks and have just charged it for the 8th time. Iām getting an average of 7 nights/full charges of my HAs from every charge of the charger (has ranged from 6-8). I have been charging it fully and then unplugging it and using it until I have one light left - so it might be even possible to push it longer, but I havenāt wanted to risk totally draining the battery. It will be interesting to see how long this battery continues to function this well. Iām starting to wonder if the advertised 3 days is actually pessimistic, intended to give them room for battery degredation before people start complaining. If mine was to drop down to 3 days battery life it would be a significant change but I canāt complain or put in a warranty claim since I was only promised 3 days to start with. Either way I am happy with it.
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Thanks for the update, @Chirp. Yes Iām interested to hear. Thatās pretty impressive that you get 7 nights of use out of it from the advertised 3. I think youāre right that Oticon only advertise 3 to give enough buffer space to prevent people from deeply discharging the Smart Charger too much too often, then on top of that become unhappy if Oticon had advertised 7 full charge cycles before depletion and they canāt get there anymore after a period of time before the 3 year warranty is up, at which time theyād have to replace more under warranty due to their 7 cycles claim.
If they had competition in this space, then theyād be forced to make a bolder claim to compete. But without any competition (as it probably contains a proprietary communication protocol using their licensed BT LE technology from CEVA called RivieraWaves), thereās no reason for them to make any competitive claim longer than 3 days.
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That is exactly interesting seeing Oticon say 4 days counting having the aids fully changed for the first day before a weekend outing
@Volusiano: Isnāt part of the phenomenon that our hearing aids are virtually never depleted to 0% charge when they go into the SmartCharger? For instance, if we never let our aids get below a 60% charge, weād expect the SmartCharger to last 5 days ā¦
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@Chirp: How much charge is left in your aids when you put them into the charger?
@Volusiano: Now this is a more plausible reason, MrV ā¦ Exactly more plausible!
Yes, I think that would be part of the explanation why it would last longer than the 3 days advertised, because like you said, if you only half deplete the HAs before putting them in the Smart Charger, then the 3 days advertised should turn into 6 days.
However, based on what @Chirp said in his post above (referenced below), the 7 nights/full charges of my HAs seem to imply that @Chirp manages to almost fully discharge his HAs every night before he puts them in his Smart Charger.
So thatās why I just assumed that if thatās true, then the Smart Charger is capable of 7 to 8 cycles of charging almost fully depleted HAs before 1 light is left (out of 3 lights?), not just partially depleted HAs. But I might have assumed wrong, Perhaps @Chirp can clarify this. And if this assumption is correct, then for partially depleted HAs daily, it may even last longer than the 7 to 8 days until 1 light remains.
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@Volusiano: I didnāt interpret it that way - just that he charged them fully, from wherever they were at the end of the day (but your parsing probably makes more sense than mine.) Still, I think Oticon is fibbing about their design parameters to sidestep the replacement liability to which you have already alluded.