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[arpruss]

I soldered in a 6-AA battery pack, no thermistor, and all was well for a while. Then eventually one of my connections broke. I resoldered it yesterday, but now Pleo (running PM 1.1) won't start. Sometimes it does nothing and sometimes it gives its hum/snore.

My battery pack gives a solid 7.4-7.8v. The NiMH batteries in it are fresh.

Connecting to the UART monitor, on boot Pleo reports crazy temperatures like 26500 and zero battery charge and shuts down.

Interestingly, pretty quickly the temperature reading settles down to a normal one, and I can try to power up by sending the

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power up command. (Yes, I've seen reports of how on some Pleos the temperature reading is off at startup and one can fix that with a startup script.) Now it no longer gives a temperature warning, and gives the 1%-100% startup count, but it still shuts down. And it still says there is zero charge. I manually set the battery charge level to 99%:

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sensor setlevel 2 99No help. I send "power up" and it still goes through the motions and shuts down.

I tried to override both the temperature and power checking:

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access 3
pthresh 0
tthresh 0
Still no help. Again, "power up" scrolls a bunch of messages, and then shuts down without explaining why it's shutting down.

I am now kind of wondering whether soldering a battery pack to the spring terminals may not have overheated the power control board or something.

[arpruss]

I should add that I experimented both with and without a resistor (10K as well as 13K). No help.

[kat]

I have never made a new battery pack myself so can only give advice based on what I have read from others who have made there own.  I believe that the thermistor is a very important part of the battery and without it you can fry your pleos circuits or other important bits which will cause him to no longer be able to start or no longer work at all/properly.  The old battery that you are replacing would have had a  thermistor which you should be able to transfer into your new home made battery.  You will probably find this will solve your issue as long as your pleo has not already sustained permanent damage. 
Hope that helps and if I haven't got something right I'm sure someone with more knowledge on these things will jump in and correct me