Adapting Infolithium to Infolithium
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- čas přidán 30. 04. 2021
- In this project (which you should not attempt unless you've learned from someone better than me how to do it safely) I take the gentlest practical approach to juicing up an old camcorder. As with all my workbench videos, "don't do it like this"
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ko-fi.com/cathoderaydude - Věda a technologie
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Hilarious update: A week later, the friend who gave me this says that someone dropped off another one which included both the now-unobtainable adapter (the commercial version of what I made in this video) and the proprietary power cable "which everyone throws away."
did you get them?
I feel like literally almost everyone is completely incompetent with their power adapters/charger bricks... Like, does no one have just... a drawer where they keep every single power adapter, neat and labeled with one of those battery-powered label makers? How do you even loose a giant heavy black brick?
@@datachu you guys label the power cables? I tought it is supposed to be 30 minute mission to find the correct one
@@datachu to be honest I think I'm already on the upper-end of a normal consumer (not talking about pro equipment then) in therms of tidying my cables, and they're all in a box just tied together and done, heck labeling them up is definitely something I would only do when someone tasked me to keep their cable mess tidy (and I know for sure it would be a 1 month only thing, the next month it would be all a mess again).
@@Kalvinjj I probably just enjoy using my label printer more than I should lol. It just makes such satisfying noises.
Brrrrrrrr _Awkward Pause_ Snip-Snap *BEEP*
“Just replace the cells” reminds me of an old adage of my mother’s: “The definition of easy work is work that someone else has to do.”
the "Just replace the cells" lives along the "Just buy another one" and "stop being poor"
replacing the cells "IS" easy. its getting the god damned things out of their little coffins that is a pain in the freaking you know what.
Must be why "just" is one of my own mother's favorite words, considering how she makes everyone do everything for her >.
@@nerys71 unless planned obsolescence is built into the microcontroller, and it wipes itself with the cells removed, or doesn't reset charge count and has a charge count limit, etc, which is the entire reason why these smart lithium batteries exist.
The cast iron pan being the upgraded version of the explosion containment pie dish?
correct!
@@CathodeRayDude an extremely wise move. I've learned the hard way about fucking around with lithium packs. No fire but lots of sparks and an inadvertently welded leatherman. Never again!
I was thinking the exact same thing
Far better than my quick-slap open window tactic
@@jongmassey my neighbours house burned down due to a litihum battery getting punctured, they are not for messing arround
That's a pretty genius mod to be honest, anything that can give new life to a device with an otherwise impossible to find power source, I'm all for!
thanks!!
dude i love you more because of your mistakes than because of your good doings
This is so true. Many would just edit out the mistakes and only show the success. Here we get teh full story, mistakes and all.
When you put "he's back" on screen I thought it was a reference to the Dremel tool. I'm glad it was the cat.
Extremely refreshing to see someone who is rightfully reluctant to work with lithium ions. I hate projects that involve being forced to worry about them.
This. Lithium Ion batteries explode if you look at them wrong.
@@DrewWalton I solder Li-on packs for drones all the time. Never had an issue. Li-on are so much safer than lipo. Lipo is what is dangerous
@@nicknick8148 shit that's what I was thinking of! Lipo, not Li-ion. Good catch mate. Cheers!
"Im not saying don't do it, I'm saying be ready for a fire." T shirt quote.
I love your cat. And the tech. But also cat. Much cat.
He cute.
🐈
Love the kitteh supervisor. He's gotta inspect *everything* 😻😹...
CRD: "I've never found a device that actually uses this data contact"
Sony: "Hold my beer!"
I should not have challenged sony
Well of course Sony would be the one to make use of the technology Sony created.
Yeah I have a Sony Mavica that refuses to use non-authentic batteries. It turns on, then displays a message saying the Mavica is for use with "infoLithium" batteries only, and then shuts off. What a troll. Fortunately some chinese battery manufacturers source the Infolithium logic board so it will trick the camera into believing it's an authentic battery.
Nikon laughing while counting bills. Their DSLRs wont even take fake battery adapters
@@gabotron94 Good to know, one more reason that makes me glad I went with Canon back in the days... their DSLRs just say "cannot identify the battery - do you want to use it anyway?" "Okay, here you go" when I plug in my 3rd party mains adapter.
“Just!” Omg that killed me I laughed so hard. And it’s so true. Yeah I dig this style but I also love everything you put out. Tyty!
I love the extent to which you went to get that battery working. Growing up without internet, it felt like nobody else would spend their afternoons obsessing over silly things like this. It's so nice to see, and so nice to see that so many others are interested.
Lithium cells are one of those things that people just never seem to appreciate are actually really dangerous if you mess around with them. Kind of like tires.
Tires and lithium batteries and car springs all share one common theme and that is people either beleive they are litterally bombs or people think they are harmless… very rarely are people in the middle where the danger really is. The danger isn’t that any of these things are out to kill you but rather the amount of energy they contain in amount of space they consume is very dense… similar to a bomb… however unlike a bomb they aren’t just ready to kill you at any time
All of these things including lithium batteries if they are in most relaxed state, IE, discharged, deflated, or unbounded they are minimally dangerous. They can still all be dangerous, a “dead” lithium battery can still contain enough energy to ignite some stuff and get hot… but be more like a AA battery shorting out when lithium battery is at cut off voltage. a tire flat on the rim can still bite you back with the bead wanting to either be seated or unseated if your pulling at that by hand, and a spring even with tiniest amount. If rebounded it can release more energy than is being imputed depending on the material and the preload.
Wait, what's up with tires?
@@Stargazer1312 It's that whole deal of a not insignificant amount of air compressed into a relatively small space, which results in quite a bit of stored energy. Safe enough, most of the time, to be around all day; but if all that energy gets released in a hurry, it can be quite unpleasant.
@@Getfuqqedfedboy Coil springs are fine right up until you actually have to remove or replace one on a strut. Then it's a bomb.
@@tamberp oh, right. I worked on tyres on push bikes since I was really little with my brother, so I was confused about tyres too. But that’s because he taught me well and I don’t even consider doing anything on a tyre without fully deflating it first. Actually that’s got me thinking: do cars still use inner tubes? Or do they just hold the air directly like tubeless bike tyres? In which case yeah that’s even moreso needing deflation first yeah.
There's something about the sound quality of your videos that i love. I can't describe what makes it different from other youtubers, but it's different and better. It makes the sound "feel" like I'm watching a relaxing hobby show on PBS or something.
Thank you! I'm really glad to hear that, I spend a *lot* of effort trying to get my audio right and I'm glad it's appreciated
I notice this as well. I often have issues with youtuber audio (lack of de-esser, muffled, bass boosted, whatever crap people do) but these videos are music to my ears. Edit "sharp, short pulse of high voltage" is the best part of this video lol
I totally agree! I would love to know how he does it.
Yes this audio is very good. Mr carlson also has amazing audio
As someone who's worked on my share of amateur videos, the one thing that makes video bad is the sound, often much more than the picture. I've worked with people on projects where they thought that could just go "run-n-gun" to shoot a scene with the built-in mic. No bueno! You definitely need the right mic and sometimes a mixer and someone watching the levels to get good sound even on consumer or "prosumer" equipment. Automatic Volume Control really sucks! Even a basic lavaliere mic is better than nothing, but a mic on a broomstick (poor man's boom) is even better! (For shooting scripted drama.) All that said, I still enjoy @radiotvphononut even with the vintage camera and built-in mic. He gets a pass!
Also fun little tidbit: I'm pretty sure that "C" pin doesn't mean "Charge", it means "Communication". If I were to guess, it's probably a 1-wire communication bus, which is why the board on the old battery was so complex, and "InfoLithium" was such a big deal. The controller on the battery monitors power going in and out of the battery, judges the cells' lifetime, and gives the camera that fancy little battery gauge - which the camera would have no way of knowing without being able to judge the cells (swap the pack, change the cells, and it loses all behavioral info about them). So the individual packs track energy (Wh) going in/out of them, and the camera asks it for that info to display on the screen and act upon.
So yeah, that pin is important. :) Most cheap devices don't care about the pin, because the controller also has hard logic: it'll cut off power flow "with force" if it's being over-charged or over-discharged. So they just rely on that brute-force safety mechanism. Bad tactic, but it ... works ... so, cheap-crap manufacturers don't care.
oh and related factoid: these "smart battery packs" will completely freak out and set a "permanent fault" fuse, if they detect that any of the cells in the pack "go dead". So if you take apart a pack, and break the connection to the board, the board will use its remaining power from other cells to write "ACK! I AM PERMANENTLY DEAD!" (to its EEPROM memory), and you will never be able to charge/discharge it using good cells again. You have to get tricky - either find a way to cut off its main power supply (I think the negative-most supply lead, maybe?) so it can't write to its memory in time, or put the pack "on life support" and replace one cell at a time using a benchtop power supply set to 3.5v or so - like a heart transplant machine - so the board never "sees" the cells get disconnected. Might be easiest to solder the benchtop power supplies to the board's cell sensing terminals directly. Or just not do this at all because it's an effing nightmare.
Anyway, enough mind vomit. Awesome job with this overall.
@@FalconFour mine just did ,out of 2 cell one of it gone bad first ı tried to revive it with bench power supply but it wasnt holding charge ,so ı removed it change it with 18650 battery with it's own controller circuit and that error message all the pins are there but like u said damn eeprom know it now ,and back then ı charged all the cells to total of 8 volts and tried on camera it didnt want to charge that pack already marked bad.
Classic JB Weld is the bee's knees for sticking ABS plastic together real good. Sets to almost that exact shade of charcoal grey, can fill pretty big gaps, and sands fairly nicely. Not that you need it since the proper adapter wandered in, but there's *always* a next time!
I was going to say hot glue
@@neb_setabed Hot glue is bad for long term and exposed parts, it dries up and cracks. It's more like a meanwhile or test application rather than a definitive one. Epoxy is the way to go, JB Weld fits nicely here.
And if you want a well done thing, definetly 3d printing.
I love how you showed me that everybody does that kind of mistake. Im a repair guy and sometimes I really outdumb myself
CRD: You should never do this its so dangerous
BigClive: Lets hack open the cells with some wire cutters, what could go wrong
As someone who has done similar to tool batteries. I appreciate the heck out of "just be ready for a fire"
Just create a new battery pack by combining elements from the earth.
Fly to Bolivia in a pandemic? Are you mad? Better to grind up someone's antidepressants.
Yeah, NOS of batteries are almost always a no go. Lithium batteries are very dangerous to mess with, I've had a few fires myself. Always enjoy your videos. Stay safe from Skyway.
Regarding these old generation InfoLithiums specifically, I've found my camera will work if you keep the original board for its ID chip. Disconnect the cells and put your own power source in parallel with the board's output terminals.
I pretty much agree with you regarding Li battery safety, however I have had success very carefully soldering to prewelded tabs. One thing to mention is always discharge the cells to 3.0v or so if you can before doing this as it should greatly reduce the chances of an incident.
As a sound technician, gaffing tape is amazing. Almost as strong as duct tape, super easy to shape and tear with a knife, no residue for temporarily hanging cables. Made by professionals for professionals
Costum adaptor projects like that are where 3D printers definitely came in handy 😇
Absolutely! With this project, I definitely would've taken an afternoon to measure the heck out of each battery type and the charger, spend another day or two modeling an adapter in FreeCAD, spent another afternoon making an adapter PCB design, ordered a bunch of pogo pins and stuff from Digi-Key, then never actually finished the project.
This has been a treat to watch you dissassemble and NOT catch fire. I sure was ready to see the ethernal flame pour through though, but I'm glad it did not. Precise work with regular tools! I'm hooked for more videos!
Gaff tape is designed for temporary use. It does stick pretty well over the long term (the glue will dry out and get crusty eventually). But the "residue free" nature that you mention goes away the longer it is left in place. I'm talking like months to years here, not days.
That MiniDV mechanism is just a testament to late 90s/early 00's Sony engineering, beautiful.
what was weird is i pulled this video up when it realeased and wondered how I already had a six day old comment on it and I'm like, oh, I said that during hte patron-only preview period!
the liminal message of this comment is to give CRD money on patreon.
You do your electronics projects just like me. I love it
for what it's worth, there are little portable spot-welders meant for building/refurbing small 18650 packs and they work a treat. I got a cheap one from Amazon for around £20 and used it to rebuild both the 6cell and 9cell packs for my laptop, so it was well worth the investment
yay, proprietary power connectors are just the best /sarcasm
I wish the EU had mandated barrel jacks in like 1978 so it would have been most cost effective to just put them in everything worldwide
@@CathodeRayDude Whats weird is that Sony is usually pretty good at using the same AC adapter plug across devices. ie: just about every HandyCam uses the same AC adapter and things like Walkmans and Discmans all use the same style/voltage barrel jack.
@@NJRoadfan right! I was honestly shocked when this *didn't* take NP-F and *didn't* take the weird "flat bar with wings" sony PSU.
@@CathodeRayDude My DCR-TRV310s use the regular InfoLithium L but the Sony adapter I ended up buying used a slightly different plug variant which didn't fit. Fortunately I was able to take a piece of scrap PCB and make my own compatible connector. Obviously this technique would not work in all cases.
You should also mention that fire extinguishers don't work on lithium batteries unless they're specifically made for that purpose. They just burn until depletion.
I have a friend that made a whole battery pack of 20 cells by soldering them, but he needed to use an iron that could heat up fast, with a flat tip, and with plenty of flux. That can't be used for rebuilding because it wouldn't fit the case. While it's not something I would recommend doing, that pack still works perfectly, comparable to all the ones they made with spot soldering. And the multiple fires he had at work were not from packs he (or his coworkers) made.
By the way, this kind of adapters would be probably best if we can make a design to be 3D printed.
Awesome video! Loved every minute of it, especially since I've tried replacing the cells in an infolithium and it's a nightmare..
it's so awful, haha. Thanks for watching!
*moves Dremel into frame*
"Let me justify this"
This was a really clever mod, and now I have a potential use for all the cheap-o chargers I'm too afraid to plug in... (at least a safer* alternative to my spot welder exploits...)
"I'm no Ben Heck," he says, while his cat distracts him.
My dude I love watching you go on exactly the "shit I need to fix it" missions like this that take grip of my brain
I like everything you do! I hope to be able to bump up my tier level on Patreon in the coming months as well. No ads? Quality niche content? Relatable humor? You’re a gem. Thank you CRD.
I really appreciated seeing this, thank you for sharing.
I've done similar projects in the past, and would not have considered the paperclip trick or the fabric tape. Thanks for the tricks.
Great job! I would have spent a few days trying to design an adapter for my 3D printer, failed a few times, then gotten bored and put everything in a box never to be looked at again. Your method is way more effective!
Great idea with the paper clip. I thought it may be show over when the cam refused to work with the none Sony battary. Incidentally, I just bought this camera and amazingly the long life battary still works!
Absolutely incredible to me that the InfoLithium signal is cross-compatible across different battery form factors. That seems like exactly the kind of thing that they'd flip a few bytes around for no reason other than a different guy was working on that particular InfoLithium form factor and they never conceived of anybody attempting to adapt batteries in that way.
If you have two pieces of plastic you need to combine like that, one approach I've used with success (ideally if you know they're both ABS, although you can often mix/match) is to get some 3D printer filament of an appropriate plastic (ABS/PETG/Nylon/etc, depending on the base plastics) and an old junky soldering iron tip you don't care about. Use the filament like a "welding rod" to fuse the two pieces of plastic together into an appropriate configuration. You can't easily take them apart, but the results are generally strong/permanent and don't look _too_ bad if you're careful about how much of the plastic you touch/melt/fuse with the iron.
The reason I didn't join them permanently is because I don't want them to be permanent - someday these solder joints will break, probably someday very soon, and tape is much easier to remove.
Man, I really felt that wire rant.
"Most of the stuff on Amazon is basically fraudulent." As is the case with _any_ category of product on Amazon.
"If you go to website like Mouser, you can buy wire there ... and a lot of it is incredibly expensive." Would you like the 100' spool? Or the 1000' spool? The price is "WTF!" per linear foot for the 100', and "Geeeeeezzzuusss.." per linear foot for the 1000' spool. Would you like nylon braided wrap? That's only "What! HOW?! When did Nylon become a rare earth material?!" per linear foot.
Do you need some connectors? Probably should consider the special crimping tool, with an assortment of die sets. Complete kit for the low price of "This is a small country's entire GDP!"
I encourage anyone to go quote the BOM for any small community-produced electronics project product / kit, and then complain out loud that "it should only cost like $30 for this."
This is the kind of stuff I love to see! I'm a huge fan of making what you have work.
Loved the long-format workbench video, it's been too long since we've had one of these!
And for Sony's sake, get yourself some liquid or paste flux to take care of those cold solder joints!
Thanks! I use flux for board work but rarely take the time for stuff like this, though I know I should.
6:50 "If I short these ends here this will explode and start a fire"
[literally one minute later]
*sticks battery in an adapter with bare wires and flails it around almost shorting it out several times*
:D
that's a finished pack with charge and discharge control circuitry though, not a bare cell! all the same yeah I hadn't intended that lol
@@CathodeRayDude depending on the circuitry it might still blow a fuse or a transistor (or pcb trace) up, but i guess it isn't much of a "blowing up in your face"-risk as the bare cell
Protip: you can make the two wires different lengths so accidental shorts are much less likely.
"If you're seeing this, it means it probably succeeded, or that it was catastrophic in an entertaining way".
Oh, I am _so_ stealing this.
That tape is premium fancy.
For basic project wire, you want 22AWG, stranded (7/30 aka 7 wires at 30AWG), tinned/silvered copper wire. Any insulation is fine.
For small repair (aka bodge) wire you want 30AWG solid tinned/silvered copper wire with Kynar/PVDF insulation.
I always think of ABS plastic as dusty crusty so makes sense to use a cutoff wheel. It's not like polypropylene.
0:16 - "If you're seeing this at all, than it means it probably succeeded, or that it was catastrophic"
After seeing the first few seconds, it was probably the latter. I really enjoy your videos. Informative, entertaining (getting knowledge is nice and all but these are fun!), well shot and just very well made!
This guy knows. Batteries are a roadblock from getting anything done with your home video.
It's so frustrating, I have probably 50 camcorders and maybe 5 can be used in the field
Retro laptops, too. Good luck finding a NEW pack for a Core 2, much less a Pentium III, or a 486.
@@nickwallette6201 YUUUUP
@@nickwallette6201 For a PIII and especially older there's a good chance that the old battery is a dumb NiMH or even NiCd. For those you can just pop open the casing and install new cells without worrying about the dangers of lithium batteries. You could even install a holder for regular AAs at the expense of reduced capacity.
Yes, I watched the video, including the part about the word "just." I haven't fully repopulated any laptop packs myself but I did "fix" a 9 cell (3S3P) Dell by removing the dead section and taking one cell from each remaining section to end up with a 3S2P which worked fairly well at the time (although the capacity measurement was all messed up).
@@eDoc2020 No such luck on my VAIO P-III - it's definitely Li-Ion. That's for the best, though. It needs the energy density to maintain a decent run-time.
But I did RE the power management section of an AST 386 laptop. I'm working on replacing that, and probably the fluorescent backlight since I managed to pull the end of a winding off a pin of the HV transformer. oops
When I need a weird power adapter for a camcorder, I visit a site like ManualsLib, find the manual for the camcorder, and usually within the "included accessories" list near the front they give you the model number of the AC Adapter, which I can then plug into eBay and usually find what I'm looking for.
I've also used this method to track down the exact right remotes for several video decks.
Yeah, I've done that sometimes but I have mixed luck with it.
I'm kinda new to your channel and everything I've watched so far is fascinating. I personally don't very much care about camera tech, but I can listen to you nerd out about it endlessly. Your presentation is great and it's clear that you care immensely about whatever you talk about.
I love this kind of retrofitting. I migrated a DJI phantom 3 to a new chassis and had to 3d print GPS mounts and legs and shit. In the end, the BMS system was too hard to bypass and I just ruined two of their BMS boards. Got nice unmanaged LiPO packs to deal with now though 😂 good video man
You are exactly the inquisitive side of my brain when it comes to engineering. Love your content. Never give up your love for learning from things.
Watching this video is like sipping a cup of hot cocoa
The matte black gaffer tape makes the final product look surprisingly good.
right??? it doesn't look trashy like duct tape, it looks (and feels) pretty nice!
If I am not mistaken, this was the cam used on Stargate SG-1 by the Daniel Jackson character in first few seasons. Also check out the Sony CCD-SC55 (also the SC-65) very interesting cam resembling close to the Mavica Floppy disk camera. I covered that cam a while back, this video reminded me of all the issues I had trying to get it to work properly!
Definitely looking forward to more of this type of video! All your content is great. This inspires me to get around to a few projects I've been putting off (re-capping my C-64, reconnecting some ribbon cables inside a monitor I previously repaired, and a few things I need my off-brand Dremel for) so that's a double bonus!
Oh and hey, good job using a paperclip in a way that works, and on something that doesn't matter if it ends up dying... certainly better than exploding a historically significant museum piece with a paperclip :P
Fun video. Mostly just commenting for the algorithm but yeah good video I wouldn't mind more like this.
thanks for the comment! will probably do more soon!
Thanks for this video! If I ever need to work on a battery pack, I'll remember it. This is life-saving advice man!
GIBBS! HE'S BACK (AGAIN)!
I've never seen someone who seems to hate the word "just" as much as I do. This is surprising and refreshing.
More bench vids, please! Though I do love the narrative vids, too.
Gaff tape is great stuff - I used some just today actually on a shoot, when I forgot a lens adapter ring and just taped an oversized filter to the front of my lens!
Don't know how I missed this one. PFE. That's good out of the box thinking, the fire potential makes it even more on edge. Many thanks.
Excellent video. More videos like this and thrifting videos would be very much appreciated.
I was immediately laughing the moment you said you didn't need the data pin, and that you hadn't seen a camera that needs it yet. I work in a small film studio where we also do old media conversions, and I've had some frustrating times with cameras that will even reject third party infolithium batteries. The truth about it is that sony absolutely used infolithium as a sort of DRM system for a time. I'm not entirely sure what time period, or for how long, but I assume they backed off on it at some point. It's just incredibly funny to see this was your first run-in with that.
"oh boy, I'm smart!" just after taping over a battery contact. We've all been there!
I feel like the clumsiest oaf all the time with this stuff, haha.
JUST! keep making these awesome videos. thanks for the few hours of enjoyment. very knowledgeable!
As a person who loves using mavicas im delighted to hear that their batteries became a standard in other devices still used today, from china no less. This to me means usable low cost batteries are readily available that arent 15-20 years old
This was really satisfying to watch, as it's something i would do myself, thanks for sharing.
Hey this was really good. loved to watch someone working within their abilities and to a high standard! Too many people like to jump in and fuck everything up because they "just" wanted to replace the cells. I have replaced cells in the past, and yes I have soldered directly to Lithium cells, its not exactly pleasant, but a hot iron and a quick tap to get the wire soldered I have generally found to be pretty safe. Totally appreciate that its a risk you were not willing to take! And besides, this result also "future-Proofs" this camera as its highly likely that you will be able to obtain the regular style for years and years to come!!
More plz :)
This is awesome!! Great job! I love the creativity. Very interesting !
Yes you can solder the 18650s, but you're partially right. The mistake most people make is not having a powerful enough soldering iron, so they put too much heat into the cell.
With a soldering iron sldeisfned for largers connections you can be in and out soldering them under 5 seconds. Perfectly safe. Some drone batteries are made like this.
A spot welder is a much safer and easier option for sure.
And don't be scared of lithium. Lithium ion packs are quite forgiving. Lithium polymer packs are not.
Also those 18650s and other cylinder cell lithium batteries turn into rockets before they can explode.
Also not fun having a white hot metal cylinder flying through the air haphazardly 😂
Hey! Where can I send you some hyper specialty wire? It was used to power an artificial heart. Not a joke, I service LVAD power systems.
holy crap hahaha, okay, that's appealing - what kinda specs are we talking in terms of gauge here
@@CathodeRayDude I cant remember the gage and it's not printed on the cable. It has LOTS of Teflon coated conductors. 4 current carriers, and almost as many signal wires as there are wrong answers to the fire marble puzzle in Riven. It has a woven steal shroud like a Chinese finger trap. I have a bunch of these that I scrap cable from. Let me know where to send it!
By all the gods what a wonderful and wild ride this was! The gaffer tape was just a lovely touch of jankyness 😆
I mean, the manufacturer of the cells says you shouldnt solder them but you can get cells with solder tabs pre-welded, those are extremely easy to use with little added cost if you are ordering from china.
If thats not an option sand the contacts of each cell, use RA flux and pre tinned "red hot" soldering iron ~400°c, it takes some practice but its very much doable and the packs I made work well so far and I'd even argue that soldered packs are better at supplying high currents >15A these are my two cents nobody asked for :D
I kinda always wondered if those "block" infolithium packs used regular 18650s or something else and lastly, picking out wire to buy is always hard, so many options and colors :D
Glad you got it with our best pal gaffer tape
Im sure you've gotten a comment like this by now seeing as the video is several months old, but using a razor blade to trim off the little chunks of excess plastic makes for a pretty smooth start before sanding. Loving the videos :)
I started to use 3D printer filament and a soldering iron to join random bits of plastic together and fill in gaps. You can also get hand-held pens for this purpose too, which make a prettier job of it. The end result can look pretty good too, depending on how good you are at sculpting!
As someone who rebuilt these, it's really not that hard.
If you're scared of the cells, discharge them before hand, they won't catch fire then, just offgas then trip the protection.
Also it is safe to solder them if you know what you're doing. The rule is that you shouldn't get the battery core over 70C no matter what. So discharge the batteries first, get a soldering iron with a very large thermal mass at 300C, and low temperature solder, then solder away. This is difficult and takes a long time which is why welding is preferred, but it is possible to solder them. Worst case is that the batteries lose some capacity.
Also get those Sanyo cells out. They're known as 'heaters' because, well, they heat up. Get some LG, Sony, or Panasonics.
I worked for Sony back when this camcorder came out. I own a later model, the DCR-PC100. It uses the NP-FM50 battery. I never realized just how few cameras used the NP-F100/300 battery. There were only 2 models that did. DCR-PC7 and DCR-PC10. They definitely are next to impossible to find. The rest of the DCR-PC models seem to use the NP-FM series battery, which is still pretty easy to get. Good little converter there.
Very cool! A rare case where 3D printing would have a purpose, but I like how you managed it with what you had around and came up with a solution that does seem sturdy enough for recording in studio or even light location settings.
I dream of li-ion packs with a little door on the end, like many compact cameras have for their AA batteries, but for fresh 18650s. I know it's totally ridiculous, but it would make using old laptops and cameras a lot more enjoyable...
Enjoyed the bench project! I enjoy hacking up things and reconfiguring them to work again in similar projects to this one so this was pretty well up my alley. Good word on the lithium cells though, nasty stuff it can be.
I guess i got lucky, I ordered some copper electronic wire off of amazon, and it came in and worked fine for what i needed it for. I was suprised when you said a lot of the wire on amazon is fraudulant.
several years ago I opened up a Toshiba Libretto battery, and it used 17670 cells instead of 18650 and as compact as it was it was pretty much not able to take 18650s in the shell and 17670s have pretty much been entirely replaced by 18650s.
I'm with you on buying wire. I ended up using threaded wire to (unsuccessfully) build a guitar pedal once because I couldn't find solid core wire online anywhere, and "kynar wire" is a colloquial term that storefronts don't seem to understand the way engineers do.
It's infuriating, right?! The world of commerce has been broken so badly that we can't even buy *wire* anymore!
might be 2 years late to the party, but like I love this solution, defently the way to go, after having done quite a bit with 18650's and flatpacks, making custom packs and that, and seen them blow up and explode on the field. I normaly tell people: "If you need to ask how to work with the batteries, then you should not even try" atleast not without someone who has done it before arround. It's so easy to punture or short one by acident if you just zone out for 1 second.
I got one of these camcorders, I already had a dual sony charger but the battery pack was totally dead. I managed to get a genuine Sony battery on eBay thst was used but working. The battery is perfect and works like a treat. The camera function does bot work but the play back is perfect 🤩
Correct on not soldering those. You are 100% rite on using a spot welder. I make long range, endurance battery packs with those 18650's for my rc, fpv, airplanes. 4 cell and 3 cell BUTTTT I do solder them AND I HATE every second of it! I certainly know its butt puckering.
I’m terrified of messing with electricity and batteries and such, but this so cool and such a great DIY fix
"but, it'll work for my purposes"
Your new catch phrase
I love this kind of content, thank you very much. Greetings from a subscriber from Chile :)
i recognize i'm a year late but i do in fact dig this sort of content.
Electronics wire source: Van from junk yard. The harness(es) that go from the fuse panel to the back are full of multi colored wires.
It's only worth getting the welding tool for batteries if your doing laptop or electric skateboard packs. Sometimes even a very fast solder of the battery wont result in fire but will result in a dead cell anyway. There are also options for non-weld solutions for batteries if the compartment size is't a concern.
You can make something more permanent using cyanoacrilate superglue and baking soda. It makes a solid plastic joint and you can file and paint it doing a pleasant job. I even fixed a pressure sensor using this to "solder" the cap of the sensor.
I've newer heard of that name. I use a lot of video equipment but they're just known as np-f batteries
Edit: My dad has the exact same camera with the exact same weird batteries
Yep, the name was swept under the carpet a long time ago by all the third party manufacturers who turned it into a de-facto standard using the underlying sony part number.
Those NP-F series batteries (except for the ones for this DCR-PC10) are Sony InfoLithium L Series. For a while they were crazy expensive to buy since Sony was the only source and the devices that took it were reaching 15-20 years old. Now they are everywhere because someone decided to throw that style mount on a crapton of unrelated video equipment and lights.
@@NJRoadfan I spoke to these guys and they say that while some of the packaging is reconditioned, the cells are spanking brand new www.power-supplier.co.uk/camcorder-battery/584/SONY/DCR-PC10.htm
My Canon cameras are notorious for not liking batteries without the data signal.
For projects like this, use a 2 part epoxy (putty) for attaching both halves together and closing gaps. It can be sanded so it looks decent too. Will also hold paper clips in place on plastic better than a cyanoacrylate glue.
I really do need the epoxy on hand for the latter use, but I prefer not to permanently seal projects like this because my solder joints WILL break and need repair
The universe is held together with gaffer tape - my head cannon