Recently I’ve found my EB55 discharged unexpectedly twice. I suspect that it was because I had it stored (with one of the switches “on”) underneath a piece of metal. Has anyone else had this problem?
My thought is that the wireless phone charging feature is being fooled by the piece of metal. I say this because I’ve noticed in the past that placing my laptop on top of the EB55 will cause it to make a rhythmic noise, which again I think is due to the wireless charger being fooled.
I realize the solution is to keep all buttons on the EB55 “off” – I admit that I tend to keep them on. But I also want to understand what’s going on.
Thanks for any help.
The EB55 can be accidently turned on if something bumps a switch. Also when turning off, make sure to do a long press of about three seconds when pushing the off button.
Thank you for your reply, but I’m confused about what this has to do with my question. First of all, I assume what you mean by “turned on” is to press one of the buttons that activates the usb ports, dc ports, and ac ports resulting in the green lights coming on.
Maybe my understanding is wrong, but I thought of those buttons as merely activating those ports (plus the wireless charging), but not actually turning anything “on” in the sense of drawing power (other than the insignificant power for those LED lights).
I’ve kept those on many times with no draining of the battery as I mentioned in my original post.
The challenge is turning off the system with no indication the system is off. Pressing multiple buttons will wake the system up. I have inadvertently turned my unit on accidently while it was in the bag when a button got pressed and I was unaware it had turned on. The newer models address this issue by having a dedicated on and off button which has improved swithes.
To your question, a piece of metal on top of the wireless charging pad isn’t going to draw any more power because the wireless charging protocol first negotiates power between the station and the wireless device and then sends power. A piece of metal isn’t going to “respond” and so the wireless pad doesn’t send any energy.
@bxm6306 thank you for the info. You seem to know a lot about this, so can I ask you to comment on this part of my original post?
That is, if putting metal on top of the EB55 cannot cause power discharge, then what was that rhythmic noise? Here are more details: I frequently use my MacAir (2020, M1) while next to my EB55, sometimes charging things while I’m at it. Since the top of the EB55 is a nice flat spot, sometimes I would place the laptop (with the screen up) on that flat spot (where the wireless cell phone charging happens). But I eventually stopped doing that because of the annoying rhythmic noises this would cause.
The “piece of metal” I mentioned was actually a series of shelf L-brackets (40x40mm, made of steel) bolted together in a square shape a little larger than the top of the EB55 (It’s the base of a homemade stool, and the EB55 fits nicely below it). I could imagine a current being induced in that square of metal.
In any event, for the past 2 days I’ve had the EB55 in that same spot, but without the metal stool on top of it, and it is no longer discharging. Could all be a coincidence, of course. Anyway, I want to figure out why the EB55 was discharging so that’s why I posted here.
How loud is the ticking noise? Some minor rhythmic ticking is normal as it attempts to detect a compatible wireless device to charge. On my EB3A and AC200Max I couldn’t perceive any ticking with magnets or metal objects though.
Does the output wants on the display change with the stool’s base or MacAir on top of your EB55 with DC on?
not loud, just a bit annoying if you’re trying to work on a computer.
@bxm6306 Yes, what you’ve described here as “normal” is what I’d say I experienced with the laptop. If so, looks like it’s the answer to my problem. Thanks.
I’m storing the EB55 in a different place now – maybe I’ll do some tests some time, but the main thing is that now I know what not to do if I want to avoid discharging the EB55
Thanks again.