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Tascam DR-60D and Ni-Mh batteries?

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    Tascam DR-60D and Ni-Mh batteries?

    So I just bought a used Tascam DR-60D recorder and it arrived last night. Brought it to work to check out and encounter what might be a problem... I put in a fresh off the charger set of NiMh batteries (these work fine in the DR-40's at work) and no power. Connect USB and it works (batteries in or out). Don't have a single Alkaline AA here to check with, so won't be able to check battery function until I can get to a store. Is this normal?

    I even went into the menu and switched the battery type to NiMh thinking it might do something differently, still dead. I planned on using with external power, or I'll cob a LiPo pack to fit internally, or something later. Just trying to make sure it really works before my window of a claim expires.

    #2
    I can tell you that the DR70-D works fine with NiMH. The battery gauge is a bit off -- it reads half-empty with a freshly-charged set of brand-new batteries -- but it certainly runs. The DR-60D should certainly work with NiMH. Check that the batteries aren't dead, and if not, I guess your device is faulty.

    Oh BTW it may sound dumb, but make sure the batteries are inserted correctly. On the DR-70, at least, this is way trickier than it should be and keeps catching me out.

    BTW, I *think* the battery type setting in the menu is supposed to just tell the device how to configure the battery gauge (i.e. how to relate battery voltage to charge).

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      #3
      Found some old AA in a drawer, managed to power it up for about 5 minutes flipping through menus. I searched on line and many other people say it just doesn't power up with NiMh of any kind. Looking at the battery holder, they used the cheapest piece of junk you can buy, I've used these for a few projects and found that they have really bad joints at the wires and lose a lot of power.

      Should have spent the extra for a DR70, but got a decent price on this and it will do what I need for a while, also a little smaller so I can mount it to my rails.

      Have to finish the check out with USB power, another oddity... Since it can run on 5 volts and probably 500mah supply, the batteries should work much better, even at the 4.8 volt nominal that rechargables offer.

      Our DR-40's show a messed up battery meter too, but we get 6 to 7 hours of a fresh charge so I tell out students to ignore the meter.

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        #4
        The mystery continues... Removed two screws to pull the battery holder and unplugged the connection, just put this back together and now suddenly it powers up with the same (almost) fresh of the charger set of batteries that failed earlier. Have to see what kind of run time I get while I'm testing things. Might need to change the connector on the circuit board to a gold plated contact version.

        Need to track down a 2.5mm TRRS end I can solder to a cable, need to solder it so I can get the record trigger out to a button for my camera. Then need to see what kind of delay I get from the low level camera out from this DR-60D and maybe check the line out jack too.

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          #5
          Got an whopping 1 hour and 7 minutes on the charge.

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            #6
            You may have the same problem that the MixPre suffered from. On some battery holders where you slide the batteries in head first the spring was designed to "capture" the nub on the positive side of the battery. Alkaline batteries have an all metal top so this works well, NiMh batteries though have a metal nub surrounded by plastic so these style holders either don't work at all or work randomly when the capture ring happens to touch the nub. Sound Devices did free replacements of the battery holders to fix the problem.
            Cheers
            SK


            Scott Koue
            Web Page
            Noiz on Noise


            “It ain’t ignorance that causes all the troubles in this world, it’s the things that people know that ain’t so”

            Edwin Howard Armstrong
            creator of modern radio

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              #7
              Originally posted by Greg_E View Post
              ... just put this back together and now suddenly it powers up with the same (almost) fresh of the charger set of batteries that failed earlier.
              Good job tracking it down!

              The batteries on my DR-70D are giving pretty poor run times -- mabe a couple of hours with 4 mics. I got this:

              http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ilpage_o09_s00

              works great, lots of run time. Can't say how much 'cos I haven't recharged it yet...

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                #8
                It will get tapped into a V mount battery powering the whole rig, just strange that these get such poor runtimes when things like the DR-40 get hours on one less cell. I was using 2400mah cells, we get like 10 hours in our wireless mics with these cells.

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