Can I recharge a battery in EVA mode?

[Alastor]

Hey guys, I got a satelite in mun orbit but ran out of all power, I can't get the solar panels open, so can i use recharge a battery with the container mode?

[Urses]

Hi @Alastor

Welcome to the forums.

Your Kerbals can open Solarpanels on EVA manualy without energy. Or you can claw the satelite with another ship abt transfer EC.

Hope this helps

Funny Kabooms

Urses

Edited April 19, 2017 by Urses

[bewing]

If you are willing to cheat just a teeny little bit, you can also go into the Debug Menu and turn on "infinite electricity" just for a moment. Click your solar panels open. And turn the infinite electricity back off again.

And then promise yourself that you will never forget to open your solar panels again.

 

Edited April 19, 2017 by bewing

[Streetwind]

32 minutes ago, bewing said:

And then promise yourself that you will never forget to open your solar panels again.

Tsk tsk tsk... you shouldn't make promises you know you'll never keep!

[LoSBoL]

2 hours ago, Urses said:

Hi @Alastor

Welcome to the forums.

Your Kerbals can open Solarpanels on EVA manualy without energy. Or you can claw the satelite with another ship abt transfer EC.

Hope this helps

Funny Kabooms

Urses

That's awesome info!  are they able to activate deactivated batteries to? (when out of power)

[Spricigo]

1 hour ago, bewing said:

And then promise yourself that you will never forget to open your solar panels again.

To promise I will remember how to solve it with  Debug Menu is not enough? 

[Streetwind]

44 minutes ago, LoSBoL said:

That's awesome info!  are they able to activate deactivated batteries to? (when out of power)

Nope. It's not that Kerbals can freely interact with unpowered components.

It's a bonus action in the rightclick menu of solar panels that appears when you steer a Kerbal, much like the "take data" thing on science experiments. This bonus action is simply available. It probably doesn't even check if the target part is powered or not, it just displays the action no matter what because you're steering a Kerbal.

Edited April 19, 2017 by Streetwind

[digger1213]

Batteries cant be simply 'reactivated', as they can't be deactivated. They simply run out of charge.

What you can do, is get a kerbal to manually open the solar panel, or maybe send another probe with some form of power generation to dock with it to charge its batteries and open the panel. Next time, remember to open your solar panels . To prevent it from happening again, you can always mount some static panels as a backup.

[overkill13]

3 hours ago, LoSBoL said:

That's awesome info!  are they able to activate deactivated batteries to? (when out of power)

If you mean when you shut off the resource flow on a battery, ie switch off the arrow beside the electric charge level, then no a Kerbal on EVA cannot do that.  Only a ship with a Kerbal in a command pod or power and a probe core can switch the flow back on... I had fun chasing a runaway fuel rover on mun and trying to jump another rover onto the claw with a reaction wheel when I shut off all of the fueler's batteries then disconnecting if from a base before turning them back on.

[monstah]

48 minutes ago, digger1213 said:

Batteries cant be simply 'reactivated', as they can't be deactivated. They simply run out of charge.

Actually, they can! Ever noticed that green triangle next to resource bars (fuel, electricity, etc.)? Click it and it becomes a pause symbol, and the resource container is deactivated.

I used to leave spare batteries like this on all my probes, but a recent version changed it, so now clicking that button counts as a ship command and will only work if your ship is controllable... which means you can't activate the spare battery when the main ones run out  

[digger1213]

12 minutes ago, monstah said:

Actually, they can! Ever noticed that green triangle next to resource bars (fuel, electricity, etc.)? Click it and it becomes a pause symbol, and the resource container is deactivated.

Well, I don't know if that counts as deactivating the part. I'd say its more like... locking that resource.  But I guess it could kinda be like 'deactivating' that part.

Wait. If that is what OP meant by reactivating the battery, then no. You can't do that from EVA. 

[monstah]

21 minutes ago, digger1213 said:

Well, I don't know if that counts as deactivating the part. I'd say its more like... locking that resource.  But I guess it could kinda be like 'deactivating' that part.

Wait. If that is what OP meant by reactivating the battery, then no. You can't do that from EVA. 

Yeah, I get what you mean, but I think this is what OP meant by "reactivating the battery", since I used to do that.

A shame you can't do that on EVA, either  

[digger1213]

Yeah, situations like these are why I use excessive quicksaves. Until the quicksave turns out to be a bad thing.

3 probes arrive at Minmus - forgot to deploy panels, power runs out.

Reloaded save - realized I forgot the science instruments. And the batteries.

Can no longer revert to launch because I reloaded the save. RIP.

[bewing]

One excessive quicksave is on the pad before launch. Then you can revert by recovering the vessel from the pad.

 

[LoSBoL]

19 hours ago, digger1213 said:

Well, I don't know if that counts as deactivating the part. I'd say its more like... locking that resource.  But I guess it could kinda be like 'deactivating' that part.

Wait. If that is what OP meant by reactivating the battery, then no. You can't do that from EVA. 

Yep, that's what i meant with an 'deactivated' battery