Oregon Scientific air quality monitor

[Enrico Schiaffella]

Hello all,

A while ago I purchased this product from Oregon Scientific capable of monitoring air quality.

[Enrico Schiaffella]

Today I found this

[Enrico Schiaffella]

Do you have any idea of what might have happened? Maybe there is an expert among you luthiers. Thank you. Enrico

[Barry Daniels]

My engineering analysis is the smoke leaked out and then the meter detected the smoke which blew its mind.

[Enrico Schiaffella]

Well, actually, sorry I did not explain this, the appliance was under charge. It blew up while charging. The black stuff you see on the socket comes from the appliance.

[JC Whitney]

I asked an MIT educated power engineer to weigh in on this. His take was that the lithium ion battery failed, perhaps due to an issue with the battery itself, or perhaps due to the circuitry controlling the charging. After looking up this unit’s battery spec, he added that after hover boards were all over the news bursting into flames there was a surplus of that particular type of battery at rock bottom prices. Rumor has it they found their way into all sorts of consumer devices.

[Barry Daniels]

A lithium ion battery fire can produce a surprising amount of a granular, potassium permanganate compound as well as carbon. At least that is what my haz-workers had to cleanup after a failed battery test at JSC a few years ago. The compound is purple in color and the carbon is black. If you see anything like that then you would at least know that the battery either started the fire or burned up from some other cause.

[Enrico Schiaffella]

Thanks JC for taking the time to reply. Enrico