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Older Revision of Making a RC Battery Pack Adapter for Digital Cameras

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Making a RC Battery Pack Adapter for Digital Cameras

This article shows you how to hack your digital SLR camera to draw power from a RC battery pack. Why would you want to do something like this? There are numerous reasons:

  1. You can get professional-like extended power supply at a fraction of the cost.
  2. RC battery pack can be charged in 15 minutes. When is the last time you were able to charge a digital camera battery in 15 minutes?
  3. You can use the same battery pack for different digital SLR cameras, instead of buying proprietary battery pack for each different camera.
  4. Battery pack specifically for your digital SLR may be obsolete (you can't guy it any more).
  5. RC battery pack and its standard interface has been around for ages. It's unlikely to change any time soon. (It's been twenty years since I started playing with radio control cars and the battery pack has been the same.)
  6. Building this power supply adapter yourself is fun.

In this article, we use the Canon EOS D30 and interfaces through the Canon BP-511 battery pack. However, the same concept can be applied to virtually any digital camera. You just have to make sure that the voltage specification matches closely.

The Canon BP-511 battery pack is spec'ed at 7.4 volts. Most digital SLR cameras uses battery packs in the 7 to 8 volts range. The 7.2 volt RC battery pack is perfect for this application.

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