Nitecore Tip: SEVERE Parasitic Drain in Lock-Out Mode !!

That sucks! I tried mine, and it still works

Edit: I originally thought you meant it wouldn’t come out of the lock mode. I’ll lock mine and see how long it takes for the battery to drain. So far I’ve gotten a week of light use on a single charge without using the lockout mode.

It’s recharging right now. Battery seems fine as it’s coming up bright nicely. Good ole Lith-Poly.
Won’t be locking it out for a while to see how it lasts.

I’ve been reading on the other forum that there might be a problem with high battery drain in the lockout mode which makes no sense. Nitecore is investigating it.

This is no good. Luckily I have not place my order yet.

Is Nitecore losing it?
First the shoddy update of the i2 charger ( Review of Charger Nitecore Intellicharger new i2 2016 ), now this.

Subscribed. Seems like I have to wait until I buy one of these :confused:

Weird that a top tier company could have such a couple of flops, that charger and the lock-out drain issue.

Their TM-03 and MH20GT are awesome lights.

The following FIVE people in this thread are reporting short battery life when using lockout
blah9, bltkmt, YummyBacon, 1jono and 1jonowife:

[QUOTE=1jono;4965631]Just checked my Wife’s and my tip which were received about a week ago,fully charged them up when they arrived and they are both completely dead today.
Had them both locked out during this time.[/QUOTE]
thank you for sharing your unfortunate experience

thank you for confirming lockout drains the battery within a week or less.

The explanation doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It smells like a firmware bug. Like if you put the light in lockout mode the MCU doesn’t go into it’s low power state, but stays awake and discharges the battery in a few days. If you leave it alone it goes into the lowest power standby mode until the power button is pressed.

It’s trivial to put the MCU into standby and have a lockout feature. The MCU will still wake up when the button is pressed, but doesn’t turn on the LED because it’s in lockout and instead goes right back into standby (yes, pressing the button a lot while it’s locked out will affect the battery life slightly). If the power button wakes up the MCU, the light is in lockout, and the other button is also pressed, exit lockout and turn on the LED. It’s a pretty simple state machine…

I will be waiting for a fixed v2 TIP myself and skipping the beta.

Mine is recharged and operating nicely after the lockout mishap. If battery charge as recently reported lasts a year without locking it out, GREAT,. But what’s the point of an advertised lockout that KILLS your light?? I think Nitecore has dropped the ball here on a proper lock out system that could have made this the perfect keychain light. Flawed, but I still like it overall.

Thanks for posting about this Streamer, I was about to get one till I read about this “problem”.
I shall now pass however for the foreseeable future…… :+1: … :wink:
Good luck to you guys that have one……

question: could this just be a glitch on some TIPs, or is this across the board? Anyone?

I’m testing mine now in lockout. So far no problem after 6 hours. I’m going to let it stay in this mode for the next few days and see what happens. I will report back here then.

I’m pretty sure most all will have the problem according to the initial Nitecore team response as reported over at CPF. Really though, hope I’m wrong on that. I also hope NiteCore will correct this in next TIP series, just as they did when they implemented a lockout on the later run of the TUBE. First run kept turnin on in pocket.

It won’t be in 6 hours for sure. Give it a few days in lockout. Monitor it in a couple days to see if those red led’s blink indicating low battery. I never looked at mine. Just dropped it in night stand drawer at end of each day. Was reading the bad review on CPF and decided to check mine. Yep, It was as dead as a door nail.

Nitecore is long known for high parasitic drain, but why haven’t they fixed this after so many years?

will test mine when it arrives.

The MH20GT claims to have extremely LOW parasitic drain, lasting 24 months with the beacon off and 12 months with it on. Lockout on this one though is physical, a slight break of the tube to head contact with a 1/4 turn. This was one step forward from Nitecore that prompted me to buy this light and having also just ordered the TM03 when this TIP was announced I didn’t pounce on the little light.

My Caveman and EA4 were horrible though, never keep cells in em anymore and they’ve been relegated to an offsite shelf because of that issue.

I did not know that, but Im new, so I did a quick search and immediately found many threads that report that the lockout mode has higher parasitic drain than unlocked, in other Nitecore products.
sucks-batteries-to-the-end
Nitecore-TM06!
Nitecore EC4 stand by current drain
Nitecore E4A completely drainning my batteries in standby mode. Normal?
Nitecore-Flashlight

Do all Nitecore lights have parasitic drain ? My EC11 comes to mind. Tailcap lockout seems to work but it’s been stored for the last month @ 4.1 blinks when stored, I just checked it and it is now @ 3.4 blinks.
Have to recharge and test that drain….

I’ve got the NC EA11. But for safety’s sake always unlock tailcap 1/4 turn. Can’t do that with TIP.