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Forum Discussion
Nighthawk M1 battery flat and offline in morning
Hello, I have a Telstra Nighthawk M1, works pretty well. Happy with the speeds, the form factor, real ethernet port and on the very infrequent times I use it without power the battery life. ...
Hi,
I'm having the exact same problem! This is so frustrating, has anyone from Netgear come up with a fix?
I'm using a relitively small amount of data (approximately 1GB over a whole week) through an ethernet port only. There are no devices connected via wifi and no SD cards or USB drives attached. I am using the supplied wall plug and cable, but have also tried other 1A 5W wall plugs and generic USB 3.0 cables.
If I charge my phone or laptop overnight (or for a week/month for that matter) I would expect it to be fully charged and running at the end of that time period. How come the Nighthawk M1 had been set to discharge once it is fully charged?
Has anyone come up with a solution for this? I need to be able to run the unit for an entire week straight, without power failure. I use the Nighthawk routers to provide internet for remote access software, so I have no way of charging the device once it discharges.
If anyone has any insight, please help!
Regards,
Pat
Hello,
The only "workaround" I know of is.
Remove the Battery.
Get a powerful usb wall adapter such as the ones designed to properly charge an iPad. Otherwise you will find the unit will reboot when it draws more power than the supplied usb adapter can produce.
Only insert the battery if/when you are going portable with the device.
Hope it helps, report back your sucess/failure I've only bought one Nighthawk M1 and stayed on the older Cradle and Advanced III hotspot units where possible due to this problem. According to Netgear they didn't design it with permanent use in mind, but thought everyone would use it "on the go".
Telstra and the packaging unfortunately doesn't tell you it's not designed for use beyond 8 hours. The people selling it as usual have virtually no product knowledge or experience.
I hope the next edition solves this problem or a firmware update down the track solves it. I do think you will need a larger power supply even if the firmware is adjusted to remedy long term use. Luckily they are easily available since iPads have been on the market.
Regards,
Leigh
My first attempt with a 2.4amp power adapter failed, so be sure to try a very powerful usb wall adapter. I found the real Apple iPad 12Watt one worked, some others made for charging iPads did not seem to supply enough power to prevent rebooting.
I've been using the adapter from my pixel xl. It's been largely more stable only had 1 shutdown in the last 3 weeks. Taking the battery out didn't work for me the unit kept shutting down.
I think the power management doesn't shut off to allow the battery to cycle and recharge correctly. It's probably a firmware fix, not holding my breath on that though.
Out of the box though this is faulty, you need to swap the power adapter to override the power management to make it stable. Very disappointing.
Hi Leigh,
Thanks for your advice about removing the battery. In your experience, does the Nighthawk power up whenever it is plugged in to a power source (without the battery inserted)? It has performed this way during my initial tests, but I haven't had a chance to leave it for an extended period before plugging it in, so thought you might have some insight on this.
We're a medical startup and send the Nighthawk as part of a kit to a patient's house. Since the kit will be unplugged the enture trip, we would need it to power up when the patient plugs the device into the wall (without pressing any buttons on the Nighthawk, which will not be accessible).
Out of interest, how powerful is the wall charger that you're successfully using? The supplied 5W chargers don't cut it, but I have a 12W charger handy (5.2V, 2.4A; I think it was supplied with an iPad). I've tried this briefly and the device rebooted within 20 seconds as you and others have described. I have now been running it for around 10 minutes without a reeboot.
Also, do you have any advice on a different hopspot to use in order to avoid this problem? You mentioned the Cradle and Advanced III hotspots, but do you also use these without the battery? Ideally I can find a hotspot that I can use with the battery in it, without powering down at all.
Thanks a lot for your help!
Regards,
Pat
The Telstra Advanced III hotspot and cradle do work well.
I remove the battery on the hotspot so that the person onsite can just power off the cradle and hotspot at the same time. Otherwise I have found the cradle switches off due to a power failure or reboot/any reason. It then requires user intervention to boot back up and connect with the battery in place.
I'm currently using the Nighthawk M1 in "attended" situations, because I don't trust the device in long term usage cases. I love the M1 otherwise. Someone posted about using the USB 3 power supply from a Pixel Laptop. That seems like a good idea. I'm still working OK with my iPad power supply (that is a real one, not after market). I did try a Kogan 2.4 amp supply and experienced rebooting.
So in summary the laptop power supply mentioned by another user above and an original iPad 12W power supply have been the only sucess stories removing the battery. (If it's not getting enough power it reboots).
Without the battery the Nighthawk M1 does restore itself to powered on mode and connect after a power loss. With the battery it's just trouble in my experience.
Netgear should sell a power adapter to run it permanently and add a firmware setting for "Always ON". That's essentially the "proper" solution to this problem. Netgear don't exactly admit there is a problem, it's a bit of a cop out saying it was designed for intermittent use only.
If I've missed some update that Netgear has done, let me know. My Nighthawk M1 is packed away right now and I'll be using it much more in about a month or two.
It looks like many people have the same problem about charging. I suffer the same issue.
But today, I found another way. I use SONY Xperia Performance charger adapter which support QC2.0 to connect with Nighthawk M1 with battery inside, and the battery can keep 100% almost for whole day usage. Share this with you, and I will keep watching it and updating.