| Joined: | Sun Apr 1st, 2012 |
| Location: | South Lakeland, UK |
| Posts: | 4066 |
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Charging is no longer an issue, charging the cells was the main reason for having to be able to pull the cells out, unless you did my trick of improvising a special 7.2 Volt two cell charger which plugged into the pack like the original charger did.
Yes, the red cells are the original Nikon cells from the EN-EL4 pack.
Agreed, it's a dead easy project in comparison with the D1 EL-4 project which involved cutting a large hole in the casing due to very tight clearances.
I got these (green) Samsung cells from CPC Farnell's at Preston. They in two pack, shrink wrapped pairs which had overheat sensors between the cells. I stripped that to the bare cells and re-built using the original Nikon PCB.
This is much easier because I can recharge using the normal MH-21 charger, I had to buy and improvise a special charger for the Samsung cells. That will still charge my UV lamp unit but I may cannibalise the UV lamp unit and revise the batteries for that. Cross that bridge when I come to it... Possibly a small 12 Volt lead acid battery would do for that.
Which is another possibility for the large external power pack, to get ten volts, drill into a car battery where the cell link is between the fifth and sixth cells and tap off 11.5 volts for the camera. These EN-EL4 packs are showing over 12 Volts at the battery to camera contacts, therefore the camera must be able to tolerate at least 12 volts.
The battery can still be charged normally but cell six won't get used.
It's a trick often used with trucks, they are usually 24 Volt but CB radios are usually 12 Volt, so they just use half of the 24 Volt battery. Works perfectly well.
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Robert.