Its OK...My daughter came back from New Year sleep over and there was some leftover Kringle!
Resource Link for this December's Thread
A good New year to everyone who Contributes and Enjoys this thread, and especially to Hostess of this thread, Diana!
(Mistress of Hounds and protector of animals! (Mostly!)
Thanks for the compliments but you’re ‘misguided’ on the Kringle. The BEST comes from Racine, Wisconsin. :)
They ship! $4 off orders right now - PLUS they have their seasonal EGGNOG Kringle available! Wheeee!
My faves are the Cherry and the Almond. Official State Pastry of Wisconsin! *DROOL*
2026 Diet? Whatever...
Speaking of “contributions, I know this is a bit OT, but we do have a couple people on here who might dabble in electrical / electronic equipment troubleshooting and maybe even repair at times, so, here goes:
Battery powered tools and other equipment can be hugely useful at times, but the battery packs & chargers are an added source of failure compared to corded equipment. I just found a “new” failure mode, though with an “aid” more than a tool (but it may occur with various tools).
In this case, I have a small (8” tall) Insignia Bluetooth speaker that I sometimes use with my wife’s smart phone or my laptop when doing outdoor repairs, auto repairs, etc. Sometimes it’s just music and sometimes I’m playing vids of repair procedures, talking to my mechanic buddy 350 miles away, and such. The battery in the speaker recently stopped taking a charge. So, I dug in there last night and discovered the positive wire to the battery was essentially just laid against the top (positive) surface of the 18650 battery, a dab of glue applied, and then a second plastic “wrap” was applied to the battery. I suspect that covering is some form of heat shrink. Apparently this “contact” was deemed (or dreamed!) sufficient (and possibly the adhesive is conductive).* The negative wire goes to a little crimp tab coming off the negative end of the battery.
The problem is that corrosion develops on that positive battery outside surface, and contact is lost. When I removed the wrap, the positive wire (and the black wire-to-battery adhesive) simply fell off.
I scraped the corrosion off, applied a drop of DeoxIT (actually to both battery ends) and put the battery in my OPUS BT-C3100 charger.** The battery voltage was quite low (~2.68 volts) but charging commenced successfully, so I just left that to continue at a low setting, checking back every hour or so to check progress and make sure the battery was staying cool.*** The battery is roughly an hour away from full charge now, I’m guessing, and a quick “discharge” test looked good, so, the next step after a full charge will be to reconnect it in a more positive fashion (solder) and see if the Bluetooth speaker will now run off of it...
*Nope. Or at least not any more. The mfgr. was apparently just relying on the wire laying against the contact to do the job.
**A GREAT little piece of gear, with diagnostic capabilities and a lot of flexibility. It or it’s descendants are highly recommended.
***There is a sensor for that in the battery compartment of the Bluetooth speaker. That gets skipped in some cheap gear, which is very dangerous, of course. The OPUS charger also has temperature sensing and charge control / limiting for each battery compartment, but I still like to check on questionable batteries until they prove to be “ok”.