External power supply with USB battery pack - Hotwire! Hardware Mods, Accessories and Insights - CHDK Forum

External power supply with USB battery pack

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External power supply with USB battery pack
« on: 25 / July / 2014, 15:23:58 »
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Hi,

just wanted to share the results of a little project of mine which I just finished. Did a quick search and haven't found something similar but I might be mistaken... I built a simple adapter to power my A4000 with my USB battery pack. The results can be seen here:

http://imgur.com/a/yUKUG

Why?
The original battery has about 680mAh at 4V which lasts about 90min of continuous shooting with my A4000. That's clearly not enough for timelapses and stuff :) But I've got a USB battery pack anyways, so why not use it to power my camery? The pack has around 5600mAh at 5V, theoretically it should last about 10 times longer than the original battery.

What do I need?
Parts: battery adapter for external power supply for your camery - available e.g. from Ebay in China for little money. A small circuit board for voltage conversion, some cables and a plastic case.
Tools: mainly a soldering iron and a multimeter
Skills: you should knwo how to handle a soldering iron, the rest is pretty trivial.

How?
The link above contains the main steps to build the USB-to-camera adapter. The total cost should be around 25 USD and some free time. It gets significantly cheaper if you already own a battery adapter. I bought the adapter and the DC buck in China from Ebay - cheaper by an order of magnitude than buying that stuff here in Germany.

Please feel free to ask any questions.

[Edit] The hardest part was to find a plug that fits my battery adapter. Mine seems to have a somewhat unusual size - which is why I chose not to include the specifics for the plug.
« Last Edit: 25 / July / 2014, 17:55:17 by Schnappschuss »

Re: External power supply with USB battery pack
« Reply #1 on: 25 / July / 2014, 15:27:58 »
Nice little hack.  For conveninece, I've taken the liberty to link a couple of the pix directly here :



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