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Quick Battery Discharge Problem with A590IS CHDK 1.01B

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Offline brishisharma

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Quick Battery Discharge Problem with A590IS CHDK 1.01B
« on: 17 / February / 2009, 19:31:02 »
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After using CHDK 1.01B with my Canon A590 IS, camera battery discharge too quickly. With full charge of my canon provided panasonic Ni-MH battery, i can take around 10-15 shoots only. Then i tried replacing a new Sony 3000mAH Ni-MH battery which is fully charged and it can take only 15-20 shoots. But when i used canon original firmware without using CHDK, the batteries life are more longer.

So, what is the problem with A590IS CHDK 1.01B. Is this a bug or it normally consumes more battery then original firmware?
Anybody, please clear me the issue.
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Offline peabody

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Re: Quick Battery Discharge Problem with A590IS CHDK 1.01B
« Reply #1 on: 18 / February / 2009, 12:14:32 »
There's a FAQ entry on this general issue, and it says it's only because you're using the camera more.  But I don't think that would explain the extreme results you're seeing.  I just got the same camera, and it clearly had a problem with the battery contacts.  So make sure those are clean and making good contact.

I'm still in the process of outfitting my camera with SD cards and batteries/charger, so I'm not yet ready to test battery life.  But one of the things I want to do is build an external battery pack which would plug in where the AC adapter normally does.  If I can find the right connector to do that, it would let me insert an ammeter into the power circuit to see exactly how much current is drawn under various circumstances, and that woud let me directly compare normal versus CHDP operations to see if there is any difference.  The external pack would be for long time-lapse sequences, and would probably be two D cells - probably alkaline since it needs to provide 3.15V nominally.

But I have to say it's difficult to see what's in CHDK that would cause excess power usage.  It would almost have to be something making the main processor work a lot harder than normal.

Anyway, if I end up having the same problem you have, I will do the current measurement test and find out for sure.  *IF* I can find the right power connector, which appears to be 2.35 x 0.7 mm, which unfortunately Radio Shack no longer sells.

It would be helpful if other A590IS users here would say whether they also have the battery life issue running CHDK.
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Offline GazzaH

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Re: Quick Battery Discharge Problem with A590IS CHDK 1.01B
« Reply #2 on: 11 / March / 2009, 12:55:28 »
I am having the same problems. I can actually sit and watch the battery level go down by about 1% per 3-4 seconds.
I managed to take 23 pictures before I had to change tha batteries, and these are sanyo 2700 freshly charged.

Unfortunatly it sort of makes chdk useless...

Gary..
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Offline wontolla

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Re: Quick Battery Discharge Problem with A590IS CHDK 1.01B
« Reply #3 on: 11 / March / 2009, 14:25:40 »
Quote
I managed to take 23 pictures before I had to change tha batteries, and these are sanyo 2700 freshly charged.

How many pictures can you take WITHOUT loading CHDK?
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Offline GazzaH

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Re: Quick Battery Discharge Problem with A590IS CHDK 1.01B
« Reply #4 on: 11 / March / 2009, 19:52:36 »
I have only had the camera 2 days - bought it to use CHDK (Silly boy). But with a fresh set of batteries I took about 100 pics and it was still running fine.

Gary H

I tried SDM this morning and it does the same thing. I hope to get out this afternoon to test the camera further. I have 5 SD cards with different systems loaded and 6 sets of fully charged batteries.

Well - with CHDK or SDM installed I get 20-25 shots before the batteries are dead. With standard firmware I get 200-250. I tried running standard after CHDK was reporting low batteries, but only got another 2-3 shots, so its not a reporting thing.
Cant imagine what could cause it, the canera isnt really doing much more with CHDK running.

GH
« Last Edit: 12 / March / 2009, 20:03:00 by GazzaH »
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Offline rotter

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Re: Quick Battery Discharge Problem with A590IS CHDK 1.01B
« Reply #5 on: 13 / March / 2009, 00:36:32 »
I have two a590s and they both seem to really go through batts quickly with CDHK running.  It seems that just being powered on runs the batts down quickly.  I am using the firm upload method so maybe this process consumes an inordinate amount of power each time CKDK is loaded.
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Offline PhyrePhoX

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Re: Quick Battery Discharge Problem with A590IS CHDK 1.01B
« Reply #6 on: 14 / March / 2009, 20:12:35 »
hm, we already know that the a590 port wasnt state-of-the-art (of programming), maybe it has something to do with that. i know for sure that my s3is and a620 and a610 do not waste (much) more energy with chdk than without chdk.
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Offline fe50

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Re: Quick Battery Discharge Problem with A590IS CHDK 1.01B
« Reply #7 on: 14 / March / 2009, 20:28:46 »
Quote from: peabody on 14 / March / 2009, 17:55:46
I want to report the results of the timelapse test I did this morning.

The camera is an A590IS, firmware 1.01b, CHDK version 719.  The batteries are new Eneloops which have been full-cycled three times, the most recent cycle being three days ago.  All unneeded functions (IS, etc) were turned off, and the test was run with the display turned off, and with aflock used to fix the focus.  The camera was in M mode.  The picture interval was set to be a nominal 4 seconds, but actually averaged 4.6 seconds.  The memory card is a 4GB SDHC.

Well, it kept going like the Energizer (Eneloop?) Bunny, and I finally ran out of time and had to shut down the test.  At that point, it had run for 3 hours 26 minutes, and had taken 2,679 pictures.
...

 ???
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Offline GazzaH

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Re: Quick Battery Discharge Problem with A590IS CHDK 1.01B
« Reply #8 on: 16 / March / 2009, 08:59:01 »
Interesting - I have some eneloops on the way, so I will re-test next week.  GH

PS - I have read on other forums of issues with the 590 battery covers, people have found that they need to either tape the thing down or add some bulk to the contacts. maybe a combo of poor batteries and poor connections are causing the problems. I will re-test after the new batteries arrive.

GH
« Last Edit: 16 / March / 2009, 09:02:47 by GazzaH »
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Offline peabody

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Re: Quick Battery Discharge Problem with A590IS CHDK 1.01B
« Reply #9 on: 16 / March / 2009, 11:49:03 »
I just wanted to second the suggestion of making sure the batteries and battery contacts are really clean and making good contact.  I had that problem with my A590 right out of the box.  I loaded it with freshly charged batteries, turned it on, and it told me to replace the batteries and shut down.  After scraping all the contacts to make sure they were clean, everything worked fine.  Of course that won't be everyone's problem, but it wouldn't hurt to just make sure that's not it.  And don't assume the contacts are clean just because it's a new camera.

On the more general question, my intervalometer test results, as quoted above by fe50, don't suggest there's a particular problem with battery life with the A590, but the test was done with everything non-essential turned off, including the display.  No histogram, no IS, and in M mode.  A second test was done with the display left on, but with a plug inserted into the AV port so at least the backlight was off.  That mode used up more power, but I still went 3:23 before the batteries died, and took 2200 pics.

So it may be that turning off the display when you don't need it, and turning on IS and histograms only when shooting, could make a big difference in battery life.


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