Awful battery life on the NERD. Anyone else experiencing this?

[hroark2112]

I recently bought a NERD. When I got it, the battery was brand new in the unit (obviously) from the factory. First time I was going to jump in the water with it, I go the "Low Battery Int" warning...zero dives. I chalked it up to maybe I had played with it and left it on. Put in a new battery and dove the weekend. By the end of the weekend, battery was in the yellow.

Fast forward to 2 weekends ago. Dead battery at the end of my first dive. Changed the battery to one from a new package. Before the end of the weekend I needed another new one.

This weekend I went through 2 more on 6 dives.

I'm thinking I need to send it back, but wanted to check here to see if maybe I'm doing something wrong.

I think I've got a total of 15-20 dives on the unit. I'm planning on downloading the dives tonight.

 

[Jax]

Hey, prepare to send it back.

Shearwater stands by their stuff and they'll want to fix it.

 

[tcoen]

Hi hroark2112,


You definitely should be getting longer battery life than that. We can work with you to find the cause. Contact us at support at shearwater.com


One reason might be the battery type setting is wrong. If set to the 1.5V photo lithium type, these are dead by about 1.30V so the warning comes at a fairly high voltage (around 1.35V). But if the actual battery type is a 1.5V alkaline, these batteries will fall to this fairly quickly but still have plenty of energy remaining. You can check what the setting is by pressing the right button until the voltage is shown. The only time the battery type setting can be changed is when the battery is changed.


If this doesn't seem to be the problem, please contact us so we can resolve the problem.


Best regards,
Tyler Coen
Shearwater Research

 

[hroark2112]

I'll check the setting.

Batteries are are definitely dying. The NERD shut off at the end of a dive, luckily where I was shallow enough to just do an O2 flush and do a safety stop on my Petrel.

I will email after I check the battery setting. What is it usually set to at the factory? I'm using copper top alkalines. I have ruled out the battery batch, since there have been batteries from 3 or 4 separate packages.

 

[tcoen]

Hi hroark2112,

Please email us at info at shearwater.com. We can get some dive logs and determine if servicing is needed.

Best regards,
Tyler