Battery management

P

Publimix

Veteran
A quick inventory leads to at least sixteen different battery's/accu's for my video equipment. Expensive drone accu's, more expensive sont accu's, gopro, panasonic more sony etc. Accu in notebook, accu in I-pad etc. etc.

All these accu's have their own optimal maintenance. Store full capacity, or just 2/3 capacity. Never unload, or unload once a while.

I know airplane accu's have their own maintenance book with loading unloading cycles.

Is there an app or are there general rules to store/load/unload accu's the best way?

What is best practice?
 
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After re-reading your post several times... Does 'accu' mean battery?

I usually store my bricks(Gold Mount Core SWX and Anton Bauer) on their chargers. Although I'm not super strict about it. If I've pulled several off for a shoot and didn't use all of them, I'll leave the 'unused' batteries off until the next shoot or until they self-discharge more than 10%-15%, whichever comes first.
 
You might have it backwards.

considering purchase of an item?

1) does it run off Vlock?
2) does it run off BPU?
3) does it runn off USB?

NO?

dont buy it.

My only exception is my DJI Ronin.
 
I have owned two generations of Anton Bauer Batteries over something like 12 years (Dionic 90's and then HC's). The 90's got a pretty continual workout as I was doing Steadicam with them on a regular basis, using 2-3 of them at a time. The HC's started off like that and then once I moved out of Steadicam, got only occasional use. I never got in the habit of leaving them on the charger or mindful programs of discharge. These days they sit around for sometimes months at a time and when I do charge them, the displays are blank as they are completely exhausted and the charger puts them through "rejuve". Sounds like I'm a terrible father to them, but here's the thing: both sets of batteries lasted six years or so without problems. And their runtimes seem unaffected. The folks from AB have laughed at me when I tell them this, but then become curious because I've actually stretched the batts well past what their lifetimes should be on paper. I would have thought I just got lucky the first time around but again, two full generations of batteries. I'm not recommending anyone else do this necessarily, just that the official mandates of leave them on the charger, be careful about partial discharge etc. may possibly be not as critical as we are led to believe.

When it comes to the smaller consumer style batteries however, I've had very mixed results. Many that die before their time, or fall apart.

As a result--every serious piece of gear I own has a p-tap cable and I will use splitters to power everything off a single gold mount battery whenever humanly possible. Higher investment upfront, but much more piece of mind especially at mission-critical crunch time.
 
CharlesPapert said:
As a result--every serious piece of gear I own has a p-tap cable and I will use splitters to power everything off a single gold mount battery whenever humanly possible.
Click to expand...

Yep most can run from 'pro' batteries with a bit of thought.

I have 12v converters for..
DP502 (dummy batt)
GH4 (the yag box)
GoPro (dummy batt)
Fs7 and BMC have 12v in
Other monitors have 12v in
Follow focus has 12v in
 
I don't think "battery maintenance" is as necessary as it was in the ni-cad days. But I also think it depends on the cells being used by the battery manufacturer, too. I've basically switched from Anton Bauer to Core SWX, because A/B batts are crap now, in my opinion. I have some older A/B Li-ions(HC's) and they are very good, their "new" Digital 90's are junk. Bad physical design and self-discharge at an alarming rate. The best batteries I have at keeping a charge are some old Inik li-ions I bought for my audio bag. They are probably six years old and literally hold their charge forever. I've had two sitting in the back of my truck for probably four months and they had experienced almost no discharge. Only down one LED on the meter and still read over 14V's when I put them on a piece of gear. It's the damndest thing. I know guys that bought them when everyone started buying the knock-offs 6-8 years ago and they are still using them and they're still going strong, whereas the A/B D90's have to live on the charger, because I've seen them self discharge 10% in just a few days.
 
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