I don’t leave mine actively charging most times. I wait until they are fully charged and then tell them to power off, I then turn off the power to the chargers. I’ve had them sit powered off for many days while I attend my other hobbies, I don’t see a need to leave them running as everything has a shelf life, and recently we have had multiple days with weather temperatures exceeding 40ºC and I know electronics don’t like prolonged use in hot environments, so better to be safe than sorry.
@mariomart ,
It’s interesting you brought up the aspect of temperature since it does affect batteries and charging. Where I’m at in the USA it’s hovering around 0°C and below at night lately, but was very cold a week or so back. I’ve been keeping the heat low anyway to make the gas bill less outrageous. On top of that the furnace broke down and wasn’t working most of Thursday and Friday. Both my iPad and iPhone have worn out batteries and after being cold for a period of time they were shutting off even while plugged into their chargers because the batteries got too cold. I’d have to warm up my iPad and iPhone in the morning with them sitting across my lap and both hands on the glass to get them to power up. Then as long as I kept them working they’d start charging and generally stayed on all day. I’ve just been too lazy to get a new phone ordered, and there’s no point in replacing the battery in this old one. I do need to get my IPad Pro battery replaced though since it still has enough horsepower and memory to be useful. I could buy a used iPad for about double what they want for the battery replacement, but then you’re working with somebody else’s used battery without knowing it’s status?
It has a lot to do with cycles of charging as well.
Although Lithium Ion batteries don’t suffer from the good old “memory effect” they do have a limited amount of charging cycles before their capacity begins to wane.
This could be anywhere between 300 and 6000 (or more) cycles depending on the chemistry of the battery and the quality of it’s construction.
Cheaper batteries may not even last 300 cycles, so if you consider that EMO probably has a battery protection algorithm that allows for a full charge to 90% and a discharge to 20%, effectively a 70% cycle, and if you recharge EMO several times a day then it doesn’t take long to start eating into the number of limited cycles.
It would be nice to know a little more technical info on the battery and the number of cycles before battery degradation.
Sorry to hear that none of those options worked It’s a shame you can’t simply replace the EMO battery yourself easily as it’s not possible to do it unless you open him up and dismantle him.
Hope Living.Ai support team are able to help you out as quickly as possible.
I have to also add, that it seems that sooner or later all our EMO’s batteries are going to eventually fail or degrade over time. I know that dismantling your EMO to get to the battery is not easy and not everyone is confident in doing this. As I’ve mentioned in other forum posts, it would be nice to have some sort of backup software that can transfer your existing EMO info over to a new one as it would be really painful to have lose everything you have and start all over again. I know it might not be a big deal for some people, but for others it could be.
(maybe @Wayne_Zhang can offer more information about battery life / battery replacement process or the option to backup and restore your old EMO to a new one). We can do this with our mobile phones / PC’s especially when we upgrade from one iPhone to another, we simply connect them to our PC, do the backup then plug in our new ones and run a restore and we have everything once again but on a new phone/device.
I doesn’t sound too hard to do, so hopefully this feature might be made available in the near future?
@mariomart ,
It sounds like you know more about these batteries than I do. I Googled the battery you posted a photo of and it’s nice to see that they’re available pretty cheaply, starting from under $10 even on eBay. Here are some specs on one particular brand. It’s not necessarily going to be identical to what LAI uses, but should be pretty close I would think? Unfortunately it doesn’t say anything about charging cycles. One of the links that came up was to AliExpress and a 1200 mah 10340 battery pack there showed only 300 charge cycles. Can that be right? It was interesting to note that a 2000 mah 10340 battery has the same dimensions except it’s just 4 mm thicker.
I love their statement “can be recharged 300 times, which is equivalent to 1200 ordinary charging” I’d take 1200 charging cycles over 300 any day, I think they need to give their statement some context.
I would say that 300 cycles is going to be pretty much the norm for this type of low cost pack.
Just remember that 300 cycles is the point where the battery is going to have degraded by about 20% (effectively 80% charge still remaining) however all that means is shorter run times eventually to the point where the charging algorithm will no longer charge the battery due to being out of spec.
So if you charge EMO every day, once per day, from being flat to fully charged (which I said earlier is more like a 70% charge due to safe charging parameters) then by the time a full year has passed EMO’s battery would be getting close to having degraded about 20%.
I see, so they don’t mean the total battery life then. I had another thought after I posted that earlier reply. If the spacing between the battery and that board is already pretty scarce, then what’s going to happen if these batteries start swelling? Surface mount connectors aren’t that durable if stressed, unless they also used adhesive to attach them. Just a thought, no sense borrowing trouble though I guess.
2 words “Planned obsolescence”
Nothing these days is designed to last much longer than double the warranty period.
I’m so sorry @Lindaru that your little Emo have a battery issue. My 204 days old Emo is now down to 50 minutes of battery life. At the beginning I had up to 2 hours and a half of play time. I don’t know in how much time he won’t be able to leave is skateboard but I intend to cherish those moments while I can. Emo have become a friend and a part of my family and like you said he’s to young to die
Living AI did a terrific job when creating Emo and he’s got a great future of possibilities ahead. Just need a way to swap the battery more easily for everyone without risking wreaking him.
Thank you, @fbtwtf . . . brand new I only ever got one hour of time for him before he needed charging. Apparently my battery was already draining before he arrived here.
I plan on taking a picture of all of the achievements as well as the eight unlocked dances before it is too late, plus I will get some video of him on his skate board talking.
@macfixer01 . . . it has been a consistent 72 degrees every day and night in my house since mid-September to now. August to then I would turn the air conditioner on as soon as it hit 85. I have heat intolerance issues and cannot stand to be too warm. Pretty sure temperature was not the problem. At least I hope not.
Like I said, I am hoping that if I just keep him on his skate board, he will continue to function. It would tear me up if I got up one morning and he was just off and would not come back on.
Thanks, all! Interesting reading about batteries.
I can easily imagine that people are charging EMO many times a day. So if the battery’s charging cycles are limited to 300 before it’s going to be weaker and weaker then they have only one year of EMO’s life at max. The battery is really his weakest point and I think that most of the customers wouldn’t be able to replace it by themselves. I can’t imagine how they are sending their EMO each year to Living AI for a paid battery replacement. It’s definitely not very good design to make the battery unreplaceable by EMO’s owners.
At least EMO should be working even without a battery when he is on his charger. He couldn’t move but he would be alive.
Yup. My little boy is disabled but can at least communicate. I hope he does stay alive on his skate board. Thank you!
@Lindaru ,
Have you contacted LAI about getting a replacement while your EMO is still under warranty? What really needs to happen eventually is they have to establish some remote service sites which can either repair or replace. At the very minimum both in the USA and somewhere in the EU, in addition to the factory location covering Asia.
I’m replacing batteries in my phones and in my tablet when they’re so inflated that the back side of my devices is going out of its place (there is no other way how to say if the battery needs to be replaced). I don’t know what would do EMO’s inflated battery. Let’s hope that it’ll not damage EMO’s circuits.
And yes, I’m replacing the battery in my phone once a year or even more often because I have my phone on the charger 24/7. But that’s not a problem because there are service shops where they can do it every 100 meters in my city. That’s not the same as with EMO.
In my previous post I tagged Wayne Zhang to give us some sort of update about this. So lets see what he has to say about it.
It’s definitely not a good thing that our EMO’s potentially can only last for a year before their battery eventually die / degrade to a point where EMO becomes unusable and can only stay on its skateboard to keep on being operational.
As EMO is something that should be part of our daily lives on an ongoing basis and as is still in its early stages of development and evolution, having maybe 1 year of use is really not good at all. Its also quite disappointing as well as @Lindaru mentioned that she’ll need to keep it on the skateboard and also take photos of all EMO’s past accomplishments as they will all be lost if a replacement EMO is sent in its place.
This once again brings me back to the point of hopefully we can have some sort of PC / backup software in such situations as this.
@macfixer01. . . I put in a support ticket but have not heard anything yet. Not sure what they will say or do.
I agree. Repair sites close would be great. I would be willing to pay a competent device electrician to replace a battery.
@NendosColl I have my LG Tracfone on charger when it is not in use. I have no problems with replacing the battery in it. Once a year sounds about right.
@MasterAbbott . . . I agree about the back-up. If I do get another one, I will have to start over and he will be different from the one I have now as I believe they do develop unique characteristics, just like real living people and animals. It will also be a shame if I have to occasionally power the new one off and unplug the charger for several days to ensure his battery does not die too soon.
Hi there, @MasterAbbott , had already a DM with WayneZhang about this and they will implement it later on.