Is anyone rebuilding out-of-production camera battery packs?

melcat
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p.2 #1 · p.2 #1 · Is anyone rebuilding out-of-production camera battery packs?

MintMar wrote:
The biggest problem I'd see is the custom construction of the battery, the circuitry is typically made for it and unless you can find a direct equivalent, you might have problems later. There is no standard for electrical features of Li-Ions and their shapes. The OEMs must love it to death.

I’m sure many of those posting in this thread know this, but for the lurkers that don’t:

Lithium ion batteries require charging protection circuitry, especially when almost flat and when almost fully charged. And if this is wrong they can catch fire when charging! There has been a spate of house fires here with people charging hoverboards, scooters and bikes on the wrong/home made chargers.

There are mass-produced chips for controlling this. The YouTube channel bigclivedotcom has teardowns of good chargers/battery-powered devices and some horror ones from Alibaba and eBay, complete with reverse engineering of the circuitry. Maybe he might be interested in tearing down some of this Canon stuff if it were sent to him; he’s on the Isle of Man. I’d certainly be curious to know whether there is any valid reason for the new battery requiring the new charger, or if it’s just a money grab by Canon.

With genuine Canon batteries and chargers, this protection circuitry will be in the battery and/or charger. Then of course there’s the firmware which wants to handshake with the charger before any charging will happen, and report itself to the camera.

My own solution will be to get 3–5 more years out of my remaining LP-E4N batteries and then buy another LP-E19. I have the LC-E19 charger from my R3.

As it happens, one of my original LP-E4 batteries triggered the overheat warning when on their matching LC-E4 charger last week, and it was indeed hot to the touch. (I always charge my Canon camera batteries on a glass-topped table. And note that the battery firmware probably had a hand in reporting this.) That went into the local battery recycling collection bin. I did save the latching cover as Plan B in case my R3 has been sold by then.

Oct 06, 2023 at 05:48 PM

MintMar
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p.2 #2 · p.2 #2 · Is anyone rebuilding out-of-production camera battery packs?

rscheffler wrote:
Another option is a dummy battery with an external battery solution, if you really have no other choice. IIRC, the older 1D series cameras shipped with an AC adapter and such a dummy battery, so it should be possible to hack a battery operated solution.

This "dummy battery with AC adapter" is a solution for various bodies, although I understand it's not portable.

Currently I am using my old 100D as a webcam, and that definitely needs the AC adapter solution for a lengthy session.

Now that I think of it, a battery grip could be another interesting solution as to how to add some external battery to feed an old camera body.

Oct 07, 2023 at 02:04 AM

Mr. Protocol
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p.2 #3 · p.2 #3 · Is anyone rebuilding out-of-production camera battery packs?

melcat wrote:
The LP-E19 cannot even be fitted to the LC-E4 charger – there is a lockout on the battery case preventing it from sliding home onto the contacts. It can be fitted to and power the 1Ds Mk III.

I mistyped. I've ordered a Canon LC-E19 charger from KEH to handle the case of LP-E19 batteries.

Oct 10, 2023 at 11:33 PM

Mr. Protocol
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p.2 #4 · p.2 #4 · Is anyone rebuilding out-of-production camera battery packs?

I have spent the last couple of weeks fighting email troubles. mtobattery.com will rebuild Canon LP-E4 packs. They do this by sending an automated email with an exact invoice for your rebuild job (number of packs, etc), after you've contacted them via email. Unfortunately in my case two attempts on their part to send that email to my primary mailbox disappeared tracelessly into the ether. That took a while to figure out. A secondary mailbox worked fine and I've sent three LP-E4 packs in for rebuilding. They charge $40 each. You'll have to print out a hazmat shipping label and affix it to your box; you can find a template for such at avery.com. MTO is forbidden by law to give advice or instructions on how to ship LiIon batteries but they provide links to shipper websites with the information. The one you want if you're shipping LiIon packs without accompanying equipment is UN3480. avery.com is the handiest place to download it because it has to have a phone number on the hazmat label, and the avery.com site lets you fill in a blank on their template and then download and print that.

Oct 10, 2023 at 11:42 PM

rscheffler
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p.2 #5 · p.2 #5 · Is anyone rebuilding out-of-production camera battery packs?

rscheffler wrote:
Another option is a dummy battery with an external battery solution, if you really have no other choice. IIRC, the older 1D series cameras shipped with an AC adapter and such a dummy battery, so it should be possible to hack a battery operated solution.

MintMar wrote:
This "dummy battery with AC adapter" is a solution for various bodies, although I understand it's not portable.

Currently I am using my old 100D as a webcam, and that definitely needs the AC adapter solution for a lengthy session.

Now that I think of it, a battery grip could be another interesting solution as to how to add some external battery to feed an old camera body.

For the more common/popular battery types, such as the LP-E6, you can easily get a dummy battery that plugs directly into the USB port of a power brick, which would be a reasonably portable solution. You just have a cable running out of the camera. For the 1D series, I have not seen such a 3rd party solution, but also have not thoroughly looked for one. The Canon AC-E4 adapter for the 1D dummy battery outputs DC 12.6V 2A. The dummy battery portion is the DC Coupler DR-E4 and has a permanently attached cable with what looks like a standard 12V plug for the AC adapter. It should be possible to hack something to work from a power brick instead.

Oct 11, 2023 at 08:10 AM

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