#X6100 Battery Warning + Solution

That radio makes two steps forward and one step back. The radio community owes you a debt oh gratitude for all the work you do each evening. Xiegu should pay you a royalty!

I saw you talking but was distracted by the Commodore 64 and Vic 20 boxes, lol.

I really appreciate you :) Safety is no accident🚑 Realtalk, you all are light-years ahead of my understanding! I'm sure Ina few years ima come back here and totally know what this all means haha😎 Best hamFam ever ❤

Ok. So mine is on the way. I’ve heard some bad about the battery set up & this at least gives me fair warning of what to do & what expect. Or fear. Time will tell. Thanks for all your ‘6100 videos, amigo. 73 de W8IJN

My X6100 did exactly the same Why-Is-My-Radio-Getting-So-Damn-Hot??? Cook-n-Die maneuver followed by the now infamous X6100 BSOD [Black-Screen-Of-Death] - and I also discovered that it could only be awakened from it's comatose state by a full re-flash and 'factory reset' - But after this operation the battery-monitor/charge control in my X6100 seems to have lost its mind, reporting obviously incorrect battery voltages and refusing to confirm that the radio is charging with a flashing indication when plugged in despite the 'charge' setting being 'ON'. My internal microphone also never worked, so it's on it's way back to Amazon (who was nice enough to charge me an 8 dollar "pick up charge" to come and get the DEFECTIVE MERCHANDISE that they dumped on my porch about two weeks back). I wanted to LOVE this radio, I really did. I've been a Linux geek since Torvalds dropped the first kernel in the 90's, so I love the IDEA of this radio, and still do - but they seemed to have violated every rule of conscientious embedded system design - and even when it is working, it's RF performance is so-so at best. Given that the IC-705 covers 2M and 70cm, and is a true HF-UHF QRP "shack-in-the-box" - where the X6100 is HF and 6M only - it's become popular on YouTube to present this as kind of "half the radio for half the money". -- but given the flaky design, poor quality control, horrible documentation, and lack of tech support [ i.e. no schematics or maintenance manual whatsoever] - This thing is WAY less than 'half' of a IC-705. Even if it was "half the radio for half the money" think about what that means - it means dollar-for-dollar, feature-for-feature, you are paying ICOM equivalent prices (some of the highest on Earth, with the possible exception Elecraft ), for a flaky Chinese science project radio that has birdies all over the band, periodically bricks itself, and now seems to want to try to set itself on fire. As to why some seem to work, while others are nothing but trouble, I have a theory that Xiegu has early production units that are basically SHIT - and that they have later revision hardware that fixes the significant issues - but are carefully avoiding letting anyone in on the joke, so they can keep dumping their early bad production run units in the American market, where hopefully the X6100 apologists will continue to make excuses for them, while posting "work arounds" and "bug fixes" ... and saying things like "you have to expect a few rough edges". I'm sorry, but "rough edges" around the lithium battery circuitry? Uh Uh, NO WAY. As Apple found out as an early adopter of lithium battery technology, defective charge circuits can turn a lithium battery into an explosive fire hazard. So there is no excuse for any flakiness related to the battery management in a device like this. NONE. Send them back people. Then maybe the X9100 will be worth buying.

If I had guess, which obviously I am, I would think the consecutive charge/discharge cycles are meant to condition the battery, as you might with any new battery to get it's maximum life per usage cycle. And not for any electronic calibration.

Thanks TO for jumping in and helping out

Good morning, yesterday in sota, he suddenly died. fortunately for me, no blocking in transmission... I don't see myself carrying an extra battery and doing a reset in the mountains. very sad about these problems with this transceiver

Well I just bought one, the battery is not fully charging when the radio is off, it will stop blinking green and charge the battery to 80%, to get the battery charging the radio would have to power up?

I really want an X6100, but not until all the bugs have been worked out. I know they are fixing them, but why does the consumer have to be the test platform? Oh I know $$$. We are their R&D which is quite expensive, I get it. But for now I'll go with the G90 and a battery.

I wished Xiegu would have made this radio with a detachable battery like on the iCOM 705. I love this radio, but it would be much better with a detachable battery.

Hi Steve - I saw this video before when I upgraded my bios, and I did the charge discharge routine at that time. My battery life is terrible so last night I let the radio completely discharge until shutoff and charged it with a power supply rather than the supplied charger. It was only pulling about 600 to 650 mA initially, and now is down to 150… and it’s been 5-1/2 hours. I didn’t charge this thing nearly this long before, so I’m wondering - just what is “fully charged”on this thing? It shows 2.13 AHr total as of this time. The only specs I have seen says 12v and either 3 or 3.5 AHr - which can’t be right. What capacity and charge time have you seen? Many thanks John - WA4RXOI

Mine did this on the latest firmware to date, 1.1.5, but without the weird tone. The key up led to the battery dying and the radio seemingly powered down, but it got super hot, the LED stayed red, and it drew a lot of current when subsequently plugged in, so it seemed to still be transmitting. I independently found the firmware update trick to work, but it took me a while to do so, so I hope it didn't fry anything. 🤞

Thanks again as always Steve

Steve , what is the toad’s discords?

Quick Question: Once you have completed the 4x battery cycle what should the max internal voltage be on the radio? 8.4? 7.&?

Just got my new X6100 this week. It came with Firmware version - App v1.1.1 Dec 28.2021 & Base V1.1.1 Dec 27.2021. My question is - can I skip the in between firmware upgrades and just go directly to the most recent firmware dated 20220117? Gerald - KG0VA

I had the exact same thing happen to me with that tone, only it was when I hit the paddle by accident. Only way to get it to shut up was to factory reset. I had some other oddities happen afterwards so I reflashed with v15. Too bad they don't have a way to save your memories and config.

Sounds like the charge discharge algorithm is flawed, or the cells were not balanced and being monitored Allowing one to be over discharged which explains the heating. Lithium cells do not like to be over charged or over discharged and their temperature should be monitored to shut down the charge if the temperature starts to get too high.

Very interesting !!👍🏻