LiPo balance charger on electronic cigarette problem

[Sotiris Bos]

Hello! I have an electronic cigarette that uses a 3S LiPo battery that has stopped working.
The board is the Evolv DNA 200.
I am fairly sure the onboard balance charger is the culprit.
The chip cannot read the voltage of the second cell, it correctly reads 11.5v on the 3S package but thinks cell one is at 5.75v, cell 2 at 0 (or 0.xx) and cell 3 at 5.75v.
The wiring seems to be OK from the battery to the board and I just changed the battery (because I thought the previous battery had gone bad) so that is why I think there is some problem with the balance charger chip or pcb in between the connectors and the chip. Also, the problem manifested itself while I was charging it.
I did drop the cigarette in water (6 months ago though) and there is some water damage in the photos that I am including, which I now have sort of cleaned. After dropping it in water, it manifested the same above behavior, but started working normally again after I got it dry.

Yes, the thick red wire is stripped but that should not be the problem.
I think the balance charging chip is the one next to the USB port.

 

[(*steve*)]

Measure the actual cells and tell us what you get.

 

[Sotiris Bos]

Measure the actual cells and tell us what you get.

I did, its all normal they are all around 3.8v

 

[Sotiris Bos]

Well, I did some testing and found out two pcb routes that have continuity between them but I think they should not. I took some more photos and well, check for yourselves..

Is all that salt?? How can I clean it??

 

[Sotiris Bos]

These are the routes that show continuity:

The yellow point is where I measured the 5.75v the controller displays in relation to the small black ground wire.
Voltage between the yellow point and wire number 1 (blue) is 1.8v.
Between yellow point and wire 2 (white) is -2v.
Between yellow point and wire 3 (red) is -5.86v.