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Terminals on the BP511 Battery Pack

Hi Chieh,

With the canon BP511 battery pack, there is a +/- terminal, do you know what the other two terminals are for?

For 'extended' power, I had used the original BP511 battery, and wired in series to a 7.2 volt regulated (from 12v) battery with a large capacity. Everything worked fine for quite a while, however now the camera intermittently stops working. When I removed the BP511 battery (after simply using it as a holder), the battery was completely dead. By this I mean, it would not charge. The battery's life has finished!

I wonder if it has something to do with the other two terminals?

Cheers,

Sam Schmidt
Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:17:19 +0000

You mean wiring it in parallel, right? Wiring in series would give you 14.4v. Why did you pick a 12v battery? Why not use a 7.2v RC car battery? Like this: Convert Your 7.2v Power Tools to Use RC Batteries

The other two terminals are for monitoring and talking to the battery while charging and discharging. See this "Canon DC Coupler DR-400 Pinout" article and its "Comments & Discussion" for a thorough understanding of these terminals.

It's highly unlikely that not using those two terminals caused your battery to die. As you can see from the pinout article above, even some of Canon's accessories do not use those terminals. Like everything else in this world, batteries don't last forever. It's likely that your battery just died over time. See "Characteristics of Rechargeable Batteries".

Chieh Cheng
Sat, 29 Mar 2008 03:14:03 +0000

Hi Chieh,

Thanks very much for your response. Correct, I meant wiring in parallel oops. I chose a 12v battery as that is all I could find at the time, but 7.2v RC Car battery is a much smarter idea! (I had built a little voltage regulator to sit between the 12v and 7.2v camera).

Yes the battery has died, but has also caused a problem with the camera. For a few weeks (I was unaware) the voltage regulator had stopped working, so going from 12v -> 7.2v canon battery in parallel without the regulator (the battery would still be limiting the voltage to 7.2v on its own?) i think might have damaged the battery + camera. So now the EOS30D camera works intermittently and gives "Error-99" which is a 'catch all' error, so I assume I must have damaged something within the camera.

Anyway, thanks again for your response.

* As per getting camera 'jacks' to suit various camera models, where abouts are you located? There are a number of manufacturers I know in China who make generic copies of the canon corded remotes etc.

I had also built a timer (hence requiring more power!) as I was using the camera to take shots (bad for shutter life!), and I was compiling these together into high def (far above high def. capable!) footage. I used a 555 timer, and a 12 stage switch (probably smarter to use a log. trim pot, but I couldn't find a log trim pot that 'clicked'... so I just set 12 static times with resistors with the 12 stage switch) ....

Cheers,

Sam Schmidt
Sun, 30 Mar 2008 08:52:16 +0000

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