Battery issues

[Vultch]

Just chatting with a friend who has a friend who owns an independent camera shop. Quite recently a Canon 5D Mk III I believe came in not working. It was sent off to Canon for further investigation.

Canon reported back the cameras electronics were fried by a defective 3rd party battery, the battery itself was made to look like a proper cannon battery but it was a clever fake. Apparently however the battery was internally constructed it over volted and
killed the camera RIP.

Makes you think twice were you source your batteries.

EDIT - I have just been looking at what goes on inside batteries and it's pretty complex, these multi pin batteries use some of the connections as a serial comms port to ID the battery, my guess is the comms port on the cannon battery failed and went full voltage frying the camera

 

[egproductions]

I've been using 3rd party batteries with my Canon DSLRs since the 5D II was released. No problems at all... I just make sure to get the brands that are more popular and have good reviews on amazon. Wasabi is a good brand and they usually have more capacity than their eom counterparts at less than half the price. I've had issues with a third party dual charger depleting 3rd party batteries.

 

[Jordan_S]

I use third-party batteries all the time on a Cannon 6D and 7D. They've got the chip that communicates with the camera and were under 10 bucks. No problems.

Had an ERR30 with my 7D two years ago. Turned out to be a loose screw. My technician asked me if I walk around with my camera. "Well, yes." I said. He glued shut all internal screws and charged me about $225.

Perhaps Canon should warn in the user's manual that getting off your ass and walking around with the camera will eventually result in loose screws. It is my understanding that cameras used to come with screws locked in with glue.

Anyhow, batteries...seems to me it could just as easily have been a Canon-branded battery that caused the issue. Look at Toyota.

 

[adolgin]

Hmm... overvolted?
There is no plausible reason for this to happen. Even the cheapest, fake batteries use Li-Ion cells. A Li-Ion cell chemically can not be more than 4.2V, or 8.4V for a pair of them connected. A poorly constructed Li-Ion battery has less capacity than a OEM would, it might go dead after a few cycles, flame out - all bad things can happen except it just cannot develop more than 8.4V, and it cannot fry a camera due to over voltage.

Just chatting with a friend who has a friend who owns an independent camera shop. Quite recently a Canon 5D Mk III I believe came in not working. It was sent off to Canon for further investigation.

Canon reported back the cameras electronics were fried by a defective 3rd party battery, the battery itself was made to look like a proper cannon battery but it was a clever fake. Apparently however the battery was internally constructed it over volted and
killed the camera RIP.

Makes you think twice were you source your batteries.

EDIT - I have just been looking at what goes on inside batteries and it's pretty complex, these multi pin batteries use some of the connections as a serial comms port to ID the battery, my guess is the comms port on the cannon battery failed and went full voltage frying the camera

 

[Paul F]

Agreed. Batteries cannot provide an over-voltage. They can only provide an under-voltage.

The explanation from Canon is in question. Was the camera under warranty? Not that I want to jump to blame a vendor, but how is it that Canon knows this? Was the battery in question sent with the camera? Did Canon make up a story to avoid warranty coverage?

If Canon's statement is true, I'd like to hear how they determined an over-voltage event was caused by a 3rd party battery and how a battery managed to do this. I'd like to know more.

 

[Vultch]

Many yrs ago i would test equipment to destruction at time by over volting (sometimes flash testing), if you give any bit of kit to high a voltage you can cause a insulation breakdown (dependant on voltage) but more than likely you will force too much current thru the device frying it.
As a simple example V=IxR assuming R the resistance remains roughly constant if you increase the voltage V the I current will increase.

I'm not fully across the details of this particular case, but looking at battery construction (I was on the Nikon hack site), batteries have many pins / connections, so what do they all do, well at least two pins are for the actual power from the battery but the others seem to be used for signalling and its a serial comms port with data pulses travelling to and fro. The battery is telling the camera what it is and how much charge it has left.

These batteries are not like the standard simple AA cell you buy in small store, they have their own management circuitry and voltage regulation on board.

Possible failure modes: all speculation and depending on the devices construction. I know it seems an oddity to say a battery will over volt but without knowing how the battery has been designed or constructed internally.

(i) one of the signalling pins just goes to say 9v instead of 5v
(ii) Batteries are not just lumps of chemicals with two power pins, there is a management circuit and voltage regulation on board, the battery will produce by design more volts and a regulator on board controls the battery output voltage, what if the voltage regulator failed and instead of producing the require 7v it pumped out more say 9 or 12 just enough to push more current thru causing the device to overheat and fry.
(iii) There is a failure mode called therma runaway but I'm not sure how that impacts on voltage produced.

EDIT: actually the more digging I do there does not appear to be any voltage regualtion in battery packs jsut a small circuit to monitor the charge status...