State of CR 1/3 N Battery Usage (Especially Low Battery Warning)

So, I am one of the few chosen whose V3 worked pretty much out of the box - even with the older battery caps (although with a drop of baby oil, just to be sure).

I do have a small stash of CR 1/3 N batteries - purchased after everybody lost their marbles about the whole battery caps chaos - and I am wondering why I shouldn't just use them. If I remember correctly, Garmin advises against using them because

(a) if you install them incorrectly there is a pretty good chance that you'll fry your pedals
(b) the remaining power ./. voltage behavior isn't supported by the pedals so they might either report a low power condition to early or to late

I am particularly interested in the later point - just imagine a loss of power readings on minute 18 during an FTP test. Did any of you guys running CR 1/3 N received low battery warnings? And if so, where you able to finish your ride?

0 t_smit over 6 years ago

Compared to alkaline chemistry, both the lithium (CR1/3N) and silver-oxide (2x SR-44) chemistries tend to maintain a steady (higher) voltage for a longer percentage of the battery life, and then drop off more quickly, but from the first time you see the 'low battery' indication, to the system shutdown, you will have many hours. The intent is for the system to give the initial warning when there is an estimated 10 to 20% of battery life remaining.

0 boboones over 6 years ago

I've been using some cheap CR1/3Ns (6 for £9) and I don't get the low battery warning before they start to cause drop outs, but I didn't find it a major problem. It looks as though these particular batteries start misbehaving when the voltage drops to 2.75v, which is a good bit higher than the 2.60v low warning threshold. Still I'm getting around 100 hours from them. I will probably try branded CR1/3Ns next or go back to SR44s which were great.

0 DerDembo over 6 years ago

Thank you both for your replies - I guess I will just give it a shot next time I am changing batteries and keep my eyes out for low battery warnings and/or spikes.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

On my Garmin 820 it comes up with the 'Low level' warning for the batteries in my V3 pedals when switched on....The App on my phone tells me that the Battery level is good.....On taking the batteries out of the pedals and checking the voltages, they show 1.9v for each cell. Perfectly acceptable.

On Garmin connect after the ride is uploaded it shows that the battery level is low. Obviously gets the info from the Head Unit.

Does the Garmin head unit always read low.

They are Duracell LR44. I put in some fresh batteries and they read good everywhere.

Do I trust the Head Unit or the App?

0 aweatherall over 6 years ago

Part of the issue is that the ANT and BLE protocols do not treat battery information in the same way.

Over ANT the status of the battery is controlled by the sending device. ANT sends a status code for New, Good, OK, Low, Critical. The head unit just reports the status provided by the device.
Over BLE the status of the battery is report as a %. It is up to each head unit or app vendor to decide how to map the battery % to some type of status. This is where you can get some differences in the status over the 2 protocols.