Trend Airshield Pro Battery Problem (UPDATE)

[seaco]

Trend Airshield Pro Battery Conversion (UPDATE)

My Airshield’s battery has let me down once again it’s the second I’ve had and at £45 each I wasn’t too happy and it seems it’s a common problem that the batteries die over a matter of months mine has lasted about a year and now dies after about half an hour on a full charge.

I thought there must be a better solution apparently you can’t get the same batteries Trend use there are three cells, 1.2v Nimh 3600Mah =3.6v they are a bit larger than AA and being as AA’s are also 1.2v I bought three of those and copied the connections on the cells and tried that the fan worked and lasted about 3 hours but after a while the cells started dying also so I then abandoned that idea.

I then thought outside the box and started to look at external batteries for mobile phones etc. they run at about 3.6 to 5v but are a little large to fit into the helmet itself, so it will run on a cable and just pop in my pocket or I may add a belt clip at some point.
The one I ordered here is 12,000Mah and cost the princely sum of £6.50 inc. postage from eBay, it runs from a USB cable both to power and to charge, I decided to utilise the Trend battery case so I took it apart they use a strong rubber type cement and it was fiddly to get it apart the cells are also glued in but it does finally come apart the cells have a Red and a Black wire, cut the wires close to the cells so you have plenty of wire to work with.

The USB wire will also have to have one end cut off, a 1mtr cable will be enough unless your 7 foot tall, cut back the outer wire to show the small wires and you will see four wires Red, Black, White, Green all you need is the Red and Black so cut the others off just leaving the two. Drill a hole in the end of the battery casing the size of the USB cable, inside the box tie a knot in the cable so it can’t pull out then solder the cables Red to Red and Black to Black with the leads you had cut off from the battery then clip the unit back together that part is now complete.

The USB lead now just plugs into the new battery and away you go, when I got the battery it showed 86% so being impatient I didn’t charge it I connected it up and left the fan running well I stopped it after 10 hours and went to bed and it was still showing 25% left, I have no doubt it would last 12 hours maybe more. As for charging the battery it came with a USB cable but you will need a plug that takes a USB connector like you get with an iPhone charging back to 100% took about 12 hours…

The Good Points:
Much better battery life.
Lithium Battery = No memory.
Smart Charger trickle feeds after the battery gets to 100%.
Removes the batteries weight from the helmet and you really notice it.

Bad Points:
You have a cable from the helmet (that comes from the back of the helmet to your waist)
The battery will have to be put on your waist or as in my case in your pocket.
The battery has to be taken off or unplugged when the helmet is removed.

Battery Casing



Old Battery



New Battery



USB Cable



Soldered Up...



Finished Casing



Helmet to Battery



Charging Battery



Finished...

 

[Steve Maskery]

Lee, please scale down your text size, it looks as if you are shouting! Please.

On the positive side, it looks like you have a great solution. Battery technology has come a long way, but still has miles and miles to go.

Personally I think that the battery-in-the-pocket idea is a retrograde step. My first Turbovisor was like that and the cable was a PITA. I have two helmets, a later Turbovisor and an AirCap Lite, both with the battery in the headgear, and would never go back.

But yes, anyone with a battery problem should not be scared of replacing it with a more up-to-date solution.

 

[seaco]

Lee, please scale down your text size, it looks as if you are shouting! Please.

On the positive side, it looks like you have a great solution. Battery technology has come a long way, but still has miles and miles to go.

Personally I think that the battery-in-the-pocket idea is a retrograde step. My first Turbovisor was like that and the cable was a PITA. I have two helmets, a later Turbovisor and an AirCap Lite, both with the battery in the headgear, and would never go back.

But yes, anyone with a battery problem should not be scared of replacing it with a more up-to-date solution.

As I said in my write-up Steve the lead is a downside but the battery life and weight saving in the helmet itself make up for it in my personal opinion...

 

[mind_the_goat]

I don't have an airshield, but that battery pack doesn't look huge, is it too heavy to Velcro to the shield? Or maybe find a smaller unit that would work?

 

[dickm]

The fact that your replacement battery(s?) and the one you made up have all failed suggests that maybe there is something wrong with either the Airshield, or with the charger? My Airlite and Record Turbovisor headunits had both worn out batteries over about 6-10 years, and the packs were re-batteried using the nearest thing available some 5 years ago. They're still working, despite a lot of (ab)use

 

[seaco]

The fact that your replacement battery(s?) and the one you made up have all failed suggests that maybe there is something wrong with either the Airshield, or with the charger? My Airlite and Record Turbovisor headunits had both worn out batteries over about 6-10 years, and the packs were re-batteried using the nearest thing available some 5 years ago. They're still working, despite a lot of (ab)use

Apparently the Trend ones do die after a while I've since found out this is mainly down to the charger not trickle charging once the battery is fully charged, hence slowly killing the battery other makes as you've said probably do last years. I wanted to use Lithium but the smallest I could get that had enough amps were a bit to long to fit in the original battery case so I thought I may as well get something that had plenty in reserve.

I could use a single celled version that they rate at about 2600Mah but I'm not sure how long the fan would last with one of these possibly long enough, the advantage being is that you could probably velcro this to the helmet as' mind_the _goat' has said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV-yMPfvRsY

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread. ... rt-charger

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread. ... ry-Charger