Cell Phone Battery Charger to charge a lithium ion battery
Does anyone know of a good external battery charger to charge a lithium ion battery?I am the unfortunate owner of an NOKIA N97 phone which has a rapid battery drain issue when it is turned off.
I don't like removing a perfectly good battery in order to reinstall a totally dead battery just so I can charge it in the phone. Beside the fact that it's a nuisance, I'm concerned about wear on a flimsy plastic part that was not designed to be opened & closed on a frequent basis. I tried a Universal charger that is made in China (come to think of it everything is made in China these days ) and it broke the 1st day before it had completely charged the battery even once.
Verizon doesn't carry an external charger, and Nokia doesn't make one. Any info you can pass on would be helpful and appreciated.
Though it is completely overkill for one battery, there are various battery charging products made by a company called Cadex that would charge, test and recondition (NiCd/NiMH) just about any type of battery. You may find one cheap on www.battery-replacmeent.org or somewhere because these are somewhat pricey new.
Another idea is to find the same phone on www.battery-replacement.org/cell-phone-batteries.html or Craigslist and use it as a battery charger only.
How to conserve camera battery power?
Your cameras battery life is very important. Without battery power you can quickly become useless. Here are some tips for making your cameras batteries last as long as possible.
Buy the Longlife Battery
Buying an additional long life battery is the easiest way to ensure that you have enough battery power to get you through your event. When you buy a long life battery keep your original battery charged as a spare for emergency situations.
Camera batteries can lose charge when they have been stored for a long period of time. Even if you stored the battery at full charge plug your camera in the night before to make sure you get the most you can out of the battery when it matters.
Use the Viewfinder
Using the LCD screen can be tempting to do when you are recording an event. The LCD screen uses more than twice the battery power than your cameras viewfinder does however. If you are in a situation where you want to conserve your cameras battery power then try to close the LCD screen and use the viewfinder instead.
Watch Your Movie Later
It can be tempting to want to watch the funny event you just recorded. If you wait and watch the event later once your camera is plugged in then you will be able to save your battery power for recording more fun events.
Make Your Movement Uniform
Turning your camera on and off and zooming in and out can take up a lot of battery power. You are going to want to zoom, and turning your camera off when you are going to stop recording for a while is a good idea. Try to keep things like that to a minimum when you can.
Buy an External Battery Charger
If your camera uses itself as a battery charger then you may want to consider purchasing an additional external battery charger. If you have two batteries then you can leave one on the charger in the hotel room while you and your family are out for the day, stop back by in the afternoon and switch the battery on the charger for the battery on your camera. With an external battery charger you are able to have a battery constantly charging and also always have use of your camera.
Take DELL laptop AC adapter off|laptop ac adapters
All these gadgets will become useless if you forgot to pack an laptop AC adapter.If you are a frequent traveler, then surely you have to maintain a list of important things to be packed before the journey. You’ll carry your laptop, camcorder, and other electronic gadgets.
Most importantly, it is essential to carry DELL inspire 6000 adapter when you plan your business trips. Whether you’re looking for a replacement DELL ac adapter, a spare, or an extra one for home or office use, this article will guide you in making your decision.
Laptop ac adapter is used for providing low-voltage DC power to laptops via a DC jack. They convert the voltage to match the voltage requirements that allow your laptop to function. The DELL inspire 6000 adapter allow you to continue your work without any interruption in the absence of a rechargeable battery.
You should be very cautious when you buy laptop ac adapter for your laptop. If you try to power your laptop using an inappropriate DELL inspire 6000 adapter it will damage your laptop. There are three primary factors you need to consider before buying an DELL AC adapter; namely voltage, tip polarity and tip size.
Voltage
The voltage output from the DELL inspire 6000 adapter provides DC to power your laptop. If the voltage does not match the input current requirement of your laptop your laptop will not function properly. Both high and low voltage will affect the performance of your laptop.
Polarity
A power tip will normally have an inner and an outer conductor. The inner conductor may have positive or negative polarity. Based on the polarity you will need to carefully select a DELL inspire 6000 AC Adapter. If the positive and negative polarity is connected in the wrong way it will cause severe damage to your laptop. Most of the laptop AC adapters have standardized polarity symbols labeled on them, which helps you to buy the right adapter.
Tip Size
The size of the tip is always mentioned in the user manual that comes with your laptop. If the tip size of the DELL AC adapter doesn’t match with your laptop, then it cannot be used.
Laptop AC Adapter for notebook computer
I ordered a new laptop ac adapter that is compatible with my Toshiba laptop and used it tonight. It got very hot! The voltage specs are the same though. The reason I got a new one was because my kids stepped on the plug end and messed it up.
So I decided why not cut the plug off the new one and solder it to the old one that does not get this hot. When I cut the old plug off it has wires on the ourside under the cover and then wires inside another one in the middle kind of like coax cable. So can just solder these together right? And tape it up good with electrical tape.
As long as the polarity is the same, the cables should be the same. And they should all be made like you see. The outer cable is ground and the inner is either positive or negative. The exceptions are the odd laptops that use ac current and the dc regulator is built in. I have a power supply around here somewhere that puts out 24v ac. As for my other 3 laptop supplies, one puts out 18 volts, one 20.5, and one 15. As for the temp, that is a side effect of ineffeciency in design. You get what you pay for. If the problem with the old one was the end, you could have bought one of those by itself from an electronics outlet for around $5.
Most laptops use the same voltage. But the current they need is different. So if you order an adapter you have to check the current rating of the old one too. As the voltage and the current capebility is important. Soldering some wires together is a bit dangerous. Take a uni-meter and check where the wires are connected to, as from the old one and the new one. Before connecting to your laptop check with a uni-meter the voltage and the polarity.
HP laptop ac adapter power supply repair
I have an HP laptop and my laptop ac adapter power supply has failed,I have yet to contact HP support, but sweet jebuz, I hope there isn't anything wrong with the socket on the laptop.I had another AC adapter handy but it was a 1.5amp and the "broken" one is 2.2amp so not compatable.Fired off an email to HP with exact description. Tried a few other diagnostic tricks like removing the battery and trying to start up on the ac adapter (no go obviously) so I could tell HP what I did.
I sure hope it's the adapter and not the laptop. I don't want to send it back.my video games are on it.The laptop flickered less than a second and died, as did the light on the AC adapter. Throughout all this, as long as the laptop is off, the light on the laptop indicating it is plugged in stays on (until I turn it on of course).
HP's response to every complaint is to flash the BIOS. That's not gonna do a thing.Do you have a multimeter? If so, measure the tip voltage of the adapter. Hopefully it is lower than it is supposed to be. It's possible but not likely that the adapters voltage is too low to run the laptop, but high enough to trickle charge the battery.And the funniest thing is that the BIOS updater proggy doesn't let you flash the BIOS unless you are running off external power.
I need to whip out the multi-meter when I have a moment of rest.HP support also likes to butter people up. "Ralf" is constantly saying how wonderful it is to be working with such a knowledgable customer. The replacement AC adapter seems to have fixed the problem. It's been a good day. Besides that, the DSL got installed and I had a job interview. OMG my mother-in-law just made cookies! I hope I snuff it right now in order to preserve this moment forever!
why my camera error and battery drains quickly
I got this phone for free from a friend and i hope i can fix it because i really like it. It has the following problems: When i try to use the camera, the phone does nothing. If i leave it alone it will return to the operator screen after about a minute, if i press any keys after trying to enter camera mode, it'll display "Wait" then enter the camera but with a black screen, then the phone will hang and require removing of the cell phone battery. If i try to use the snapshot key it will just say "Snapshot failed".
Also the phone drains the phone battery really quickly. It barely lasts one day on standby, or 4-5 hours if i'm messing around with the phone (infrared transfers, music). I know both problems started suddenly in April this year, then my friend bought a new phone and this one had been lying unused since then. I don't have a charger so i was charging the battery separated from the phone, and it took around 30 minutes to charge. Now i took the phone apart and soldered a couple wires so i can connect it to a Nokia battery charger. It works, but it takes a long time to charge. When i put it to charge battery voltage was 3.7v (first red line), now it's been over an hour and it's barely up to 4.07v. That makes me think it's the phone not the batttery at fault, the charger has enough power to charge my Nokia 6600 phone battery in an hour.
My friend says it's probably the software at fault, however it looks to me like a hardware error. I'll be getting a serial cable for the phone anyway, any tips how to flash it?And i don't really need the camera. If the camera is at fault, can i just rip it off or will the phone stop working without it?
I left it plugged into my Nokia battery charger overnight because it didn't want to fully charge (my charger has a status led), and now it looks like the charging circuit of the phone blew. The battery is drained and it keeps saying "Insufficient power to charge". Well, it looks like i'll be doing what i should've done in the first place - wire straight to the battery. It's not really the best way to charge a Li-Ion, but during my tests i found out this battery has a very good internal safety circuit, so at least it won't catch fire.
Charging light remains on and the battery does not charge
I have purchased an expensave mobile battery charger that plugs into my car's 12v power socket to charge the camcorder while on the move. The charger has a USB charging socket that delivers 5V @ 2A. No matter how long the camcorder is connected the charging light remains on and the battery does not charge. The camcorder does get slightly warm when connected to this charger.
It's a shame this is not mentioned in the documentation. I can charge many of my devices ( iPhone, DS, Laptop etc) from my non mains charger without problems. If devices use USB type charging systems (5v) they should be able to be charged in this way. Because of this (to save weight and space) I did not include my mains charger on my recent vacation because I had a mobile charging solution that was able to charge all of my other equipment without problems.Half way through my vacation my battery gave out and was unable to re-charge it.
I have noted this problem with a Toshiba Camileo and also some other USB devices that wont charge of an external USB power source (including IPOD's) I am wondering if these devices expect the data wires to be grounded or held to 5v to initiate charging.
Laptop AC Adapter Power Failed
My wife's laptop doesn't react to having an laptop AC adapter plugged in, but it can still run off of battery. (I charge her battery in my laptop and all is well, but that gets old quick). I popped it open and didn't notice anything popped or burnt, all the traces seem in tact and the capacitors are happily sitting there without so much as a bead of capci-juice running down the side.I'm hoping to be told "oh, that problem, just shake it this way, spray some air here, and off you go", but so far HP has just been telling me it is a $400 job and I have to wait a month to get it back.
After two and a half years, my laptop's AC adapter went bad. There are stress points at various points on an adapter. Go to a local retailer w/ a decent return policy and buy a universal power adapter. They usually come with a transformer, an AC plug, and another cable that goes to the computer. It should come with a variety of plugs for various laptop brands.Buy one (I use a Targus adapter) which is capable of putting out an equal or greater power output as the one your wife has. It should say it on the adapter itself. I don't remember how I determined my laptop's power requirements. I think I took it from the battery's voltage and amperage stats.Anyways, if this doesn't work, then you can rule out the AC adapter and figure out what to do next. But changes are that your AC adapter will fail sooner than the laptop's motherboard power plug header.
My Gateway laptop doesn't receive any power from Adapter anymore. It was acting up where it would switch from power suply to battery intermittently and non-stop. It was really annoying. I soldered in a new power jack thinking that was the problem. However, that didn't fix the problem. I continued working with it with this annoying condition until it finally gave up charging the laptop altogether. Now my battery is completed discharged so I can't even start the laptop. I know if I put a charged battery it will boot because I tried it with my friends, who has the exact same laptop. I am not ready to change the motherboard, but I really wish I could fix the problem if it's within the motherboard.
As long as the voltage/amperage/polarity are the same, I don't see any reason to stick with the manufacturer. (then again, I refill my own ink).Just a quick update, I still haven't gotten this fixed, and after spending a good two hours I could not remove the motherboard from the laptop case. The step by step instructions from a PDF manual I found on HP's website was worthless. They give instructions like "use a flathead screwdriver to remove the faceplate". After 30 minutes of struggling with a flathead screwdriver I was nowhere further and had only succeeded in scratching up my wife's laptop.(coming from a guy who has taken apart and re-assembled a laserjet printer and various other small devices such as cell phones, calculators, and PDA's, this should have been much easier)So I'm just going to save up and ship it off to HP and let them send me a working laptop, whether that is the original one or a refurb, as long as it works, I'll be happy.
Battery LED’s are an adequate substitute for a chip in a camcorder battery
I am aware of the intelligent battery system that Canon and Sony have deployed on their latest camcorders. I just bought a Canon Vixia HF11 HD camcorder and wanted to purchase their high capacity BP-827 battery for it, but no one has it in stock. One vendor told me that Canon has a problem with the chip in their intelligent batteries and has had to cease production until they can fix the problem. Because of this problem I had to buy several non Canon batteries. I got some with LED's in the battery that tell you the approximate state of charge when you press a button on the battery. With that feature built in the intelligent system is not necessary. I also bought a Canon battery charger, which at this point was a waste of money since it will not recharge any non Canon battery. Every time I turn the camcorder on with a non Canon battery installed I get a warning message, but there is no problem with anything, so why do I need a warning? Canon sells a dedicated DVD burner for use with this camcorder which connects via USB. Every time I connected the camcorder to my computer via USB I was asked if I'm connecting to the DVD burner or a PC. There's a menu option to have the camcorder always assume you are connecting to a PC if you don't own the Canon DVD burner. Canon should provide a menu option to eliminate the warnings concerning batteries too since these are nothing more than a nuisance. I am disappointed that Consumer Reports does not report these issues and put pressure on the manufacturers to stop this nonsense. I'm also surprised these anticompetitive practices are legal.
Just because there are LEDs in the battery does not mean that the battery has an chip in it at all. In fact, the LEDs are not connected at all to any circuit which might have controlled the chip. As such, the batteries with LED charge state lights on it behaves exactly the same as a battery with no chip or LEDs at all. If a salesperson told you that a battery with LEDs eliminates the need for an intelligent battery, he or she is definitely incorrect. That person is more likely to be a teenager or other inexperienced person who knows little to nothing about the different kinds of rechargeable camcorder batteries. The tough economic times have forced electronics stores and other retailers to rely largely or entirely on untrained, inexperienced staff who knows little to nothing about the products that they sell and get paid barely the minimum wage just for their work. (There are fewer and fewer knowledgable people working in those retailers because they all want a lot more money than what the companies are willing to pay them.) After all, the salespeople are there just to make more money for the company they work for - even if they leave the customer completely dissatisfied or even downright angry. (In other words, they work only for the company's bottom line.)And I would like to say that both Canon and Sony should have found a way to prevent incompatible batteries from being fully seated into the battery compartments of their newer camcorders without affecting the backwards compatibility of newer batteries in older camcorders. Perhaps they should have taken a clue from the Nikon DSLRs.By the way, the current Sony H batteries actually have two smart chips inside them: one (ActiFORCE) for the newer camcorders, the other (InfoLITHIUM) for backwards compatibility with older P battery camcorders. The older P batteries have only the InfoLITHIUM smart chip; thus, they won't work in a camcorder which requires the ActiFORCE smart chip to work.
I was the one that decided that the camcorder battery LED's were an adequate substitute for a chip in a battery. All the chip does is interpret the battery's state of charge as minutes of remaining battery life. The LED's do the same thing only with less accuracy, but for the difference in price that's fine with me. You call batteries without a chip incompatible. The requirement for the battery is a 7.2 volt output at so many milliampere hours per charge. The chip adds nothing to the battery's functionality. I own a Sony camcorder with an Info lithium battery, which displays time remaining during use. What added functions does ActiFORCE provide? The batteries I purchased with the LED's are rated at 7.2 volts, 3400 MAH and cost $52 each. They run the camcorder for three hours straight. the Canon BP-827, which I would have bought if it were available, is only rated at about 2700 MAH and costs over three times the price. What is gained by using the Canon battery? As I said previously, Consumer Reports should rate equipment which attempts to force use of the manufacturer's accessories only for no good reason as unacceptable.
Try Laptop AC Adapter Method
Don't know how to check for dead capacitors. Even if there are dead capacitors, how do I even fix them? And if power is not getting to the board after recently putting in a new jack, then I'm not sure how to fix motherboard problem. I saw a used motherboard for this Gateway Model for $160.00. Maybe that's my best bet. I bought a replacement laptop AC adapter about a month ago and it works great. Is there any reason to think that a replacement laptop AC adapter would be any worse than the manufacturers?
As long as the voltage/amperage/polarity are the same, I don't see any reason to stick with the manufacturer. (then again, I refill my own ink)Just a quick update, I still haven't gotten this fixed, and after spending a good two hours I could not remove the motherboard from the laptop case. The step by step instructions from a PDF manual I found on HP's website was worthless. They give instructions like "use a flathead screwdriver to remove the faceplate". After 30 minutes of struggling with a flathead screwdriver I was nowhere further and had only succeeded in scratching up my wife's laptop.
My Gateway laptop doesn't receive any power from Adapter anymore. It was acting up where it would switch from power suply to battery intermittently and non-stop. It was really annoying. I soldered in a new power jack thinking that was the problem. However, that didn't fix the problem. I continued working with it with this annoying condition until it finally gave up charging the laptop altogether. Now my battery is completed discharged so I can't even start the laptop. I know if I put a charged battery it will boot because I tried it with my friends, who has the exact same laptop. I am not ready to change the motherboard, but I really wish I could fix the problem if it's within the motherboard. Has anyone gotten they're problem fixed?here are a few things that I'd try:
1.Try your friend's AC adaptor in your laptop, that'll rule out a broken connecter there.
2.Charge your battery using his laptop, that should give you some juice to work with.
3.Check the internal connecter while the adapter's plugged in, make sure power's getting to the board.
4.Check for dead capacitors, the internal power gubbins could be b0rked.
Following above try,the laptop ac adapter will work better for our laptops.