Tablet battery swelled

I was doing some maintenance on one of my tablets I use for dashboard display and noticed that back was bulging. This is a Dell Venue 8 that I’ve had for a few years now, it just caught me off guard and now I’m trying to figure out if the tablet got overcharged or something.

This is probably a good time to get one of the metering plugin outlets so I can create a piston that will turn off the outlet to let the tablet run down the battery to low then let it recharge.

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I have mine turn off the outlet power every night when in night mode or when there’s no activity in the hallway where the tablet is mounted. This way the battery get’s very well conditioned with a fairly random charging pattern. I also set the screen to never turn off (developer mode setting) when attached to power and off when not, this also helps reduce screen burn in and reduce heat levels on the tablet. Due to the power being tied to motion we never actually see the tablet with the screen off.

Got two touchpads from the original firesale, batteries still last a few hours amazingly. Some devices just have better batteries.

If it’s on AC all the time, unplug the battery if possible and see if AC will keep it on. If so, ditch the battery and avoid the possible “burned down house” scenario.

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I’m going to remove the cover tomorrow after I find the torx screwdriver and will try powering it with AC only. There’s a peanut metering outlet on order so the new tablet I have mounted will be connected to that for battery maintenance.

I finally got around to tinkering with the tablet again yesterday (after I found the torx set). It will not power on without the battery connected. I ordered a replacement one and will put it back in service after it the pack gets installed.

I need to figure out a better way of stopping the charge, the walwart plugged into a peanut outlet looks funny and takes up space.