Charger from older Panasonic batteries ok to use?

H

Humanoid Typhoon

Well-known member
Just took a look at my old GS400 charger and it looks the same as far as mounting to the HMC150's charger. The HMC150's battery even mounts up fine to the old charger.

I tried charging it for a second and the light turned on but I was wondering if it would be safe to use to charge my batteries? Like maybe a change in how it pushes power to the battery from the charger that would make it dangerous to use the old one?

If it's okay to use...sweet. Got a charger to leave in the bag :).

Any insight? I'm not too keen on battery technology and inner workings.

Thanks
 
Check the output voltage and amps and see if it matches up to the HMC's charger. If all the specs are identical, you should be fine.

Hrm.....would this also mean you could use the batteries from your GS400 on your HMC? I wouldn't think so, but then, who knows?
 
thanks for the reply!


The HMC150 is 7.3v = 1.75a (video camera) / 8.4v = 1.3a (charge)

The GS400 is 7.9 = 1.4a (video camera) / 8.4 = .65a (charge)

Since it's the same charge, would that be okay to use?
 
well, I'm not an electrician, but I know that a difference in amperage can be problematic. Usually it's an issue with overamperage, though....soooo, my guess is that since the charge voltage is identical, and the amperage is lower on the GS400 charger, it would probably just take LONGER to charge an HMC battery on the GS400 charger.

I wouldn't use it to power the camera though, as it is under amped (could cause issues writing to the card, among other things) and the voltage is over the spec for the HMC.

Again though, I'm not an electrician, so perhaps someone else can give a more definite answer.
 
I am battery scientist here, the GS400 battery has the same nominal voltage with a much smaller capacity, you should be OK because the battery charging works like this:
Charge the battery to 7.4V using constant current, then fix the voltage at 7.4V and continuously charge it until current drops to a certain threshold. Since HMC150 has a large battery, the charging time could be longer. This process is called CC/CV in battery industry!
 
I was wondering the same as we have a GS series camera and the charger looked the same. Would be nice to charge a couple batteries at the same time.
 
Dolgin needs to weigh in on this but he said that if a client would like to start using his turbo chargers for batteries that are for the HMC150, to let him know so that he a can make a few modifications to the charger to get it to work. I don't know if those are mechanical or electrical or both.

Sincerely,

Andrew Hoffman
Vice President
Specialized Communications Corp.
20940 Twin Springs Dr.
Smithsburg, MD 21783-1510 USA
800-359-1858 (US)
301-790-0103
Fax: 301-790-0173
andrewh@spec-comm.com
www.spec-comm.com
www.twitter.com/speccomm
 
matt s. said:
I was wondering the same as we have a GS series camera and the charger looked the same. Would be nice to charge a couple batteries at the same time.
Click to expand...

I believe Lifepo4 is correct. I've been using the charger from my GS300 as a second charger on that basis.
 
Yes, it would be OK to do it. The only caveat is the GS400 charger is not going to be charging them fast. It is really meant to charge much smaller capacity batteries. At .65A it would take almost 10 hours to charge the high capacity HMC150 battery.
 
MadHMC150,

I think you'll find that these batteries although the same physical size will not work in your HMC :( Also note that the genuine HMC150 battery code has a PPK suffix and all these aftermarket e-bay ones don't.

The problem is that the voltage they supply goes over the HMC's operating threshold (being around 7.89VDC.) You'll find that when you insert one of these batteries the camera will display a warning message for a couple of seconds and shut down. I made the same mistake last year and bought 2 chargers and 3 batteries which are now laying waste in my junk drawer. Panasonic has really got us by the balls with the batteries for this camera.

In the end I was forced to spend close to $900AUD at B&H to ship 3 x VW-VBG6PPK batteries to Australia. I too am hoping those Chinese e-bay battery sellers get on board with the HMC's power requirements soon!!
 
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