Warning! after5pm.net batteries SUCK!

[DocFrankenstein]

I got 2 batteries from them...

:evil:

http://after5pm.net/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=VP_ACD-674

It was on sale for 25 bucks. 30 charges... and it's useless.

It doesn't work at all anymore. When I put it in the camera, the charge isn't large enough for the camera to work. When I put it in the charger, the light becomes steady after 2 minutes :evil:

This sucks

[robertwgross]

I got 2 batteries from them...

:evil:

http://after5pm.net/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=VP_ACD-674

It was on sale for 25 bucks. 30 charges... and it's useless.

It doesn't work at all anymore. When I put it in the camera, the charge isn't large enough for the camera to work. When I put it in the charger, the light becomes steady after 2 minutes :evil:

This sucks

This is a contradiction. If you put the battery in the charger and the charger light becomes steady after only two minutes, then that means that the battery had a fairly high charge still on it (actually, that its voltage is high). A voltmeter would confirm that. That does not indict the battery, all by itself.
Now, if the same battery will not run the camera, then that can mean something else. For instance, if the battery contacts in the battery compartment were not meeting the battery. That could be the fault of the battery, or it could be the fault of the battery compartment contacts.

For what it's worth, I bought two batteries from the same place, and they have turned out to be the best two I've ever had.

---Bob Gross---

[wolf]

I had the same scenario with a year old Canon battery. I put it in the charger and within 5 mins it registered full charge. Put it in the camera and the camera would not operate. I checked the battery voltage with a VOM and it showed zero volts. Put it back in the charger and the full charge light came on instantly. I checked the continuity of the battery (ohms), turns out it had a dead short. My charger was reading a dead short as being a full charge.

[DocFrankenstein]

I don't know for sure what is happening. I only used one battery so far. I will try the other one... Certainly hope it will last longer.

It seemed to work ok before that.

The voltage can't change by definition... it's the basic property of the chemical reaction. Had the voltage varied, the camera wouldn't be able to run properly. The current changes though...

At least it's just a battery that failed... not the camera. :?

[robertwgross]

My charger was reading a dead short as being a full charge.

So, you're saying that the charger was wrong as well as the battery being wrong? That seems odd, doesn't it?

---Bob Gross---

[robertwgross]

The voltage can't change by definition... it's the basic property of the chemical reaction. Had the voltage varied, the camera wouldn't be able to run properly. The current changes though...


The BP-511 or BP-511A battery is rated at something like 7.4 volts and 1100 to 1500 mAH. When you get it up to a full charge, it should read something like 8 volts open circuit. When the battery is run down, it will read something like 6 volts. If the battery is shorted, it will read something like 3 volts or less than one volt. All of this assumes that you have the voltmeter across the battery terminals + and -. Do not measure across B and D.

It is possible for a battery to have 7-8 volts on it and have no current available. However, I have never seen this type of battery show that.

---Bob Gross---

[robertwgross]

The voltage can't change by definition... it's the basic property of the chemical reaction. Had the voltage varied, the camera wouldn't be able to run properly. The current changes though...


The BP-511 or BP-511A battery is rated at something like 7.4 volts and 1100 to 1500 mAH. When you get it up to a full charge, it should read something like 8 volts open circuit. When the battery is run down, it will read something like 6 volts. If the battery is shorted, it will read something like 3 volts or less than one volt. All of this assumes that you have the voltmeter across the battery terminals + and -. Do not measure across B and D.

It is possible for a battery to have 7-8 volts on it and have no current available. However, I have never seen this type of battery show that.

---Bob Gross---

[wolf]

My charger was reading a dead short as being a full charge.

So, you're saying that the charger was wrong as well as the battery being wrong? That seems odd, doesn't it?

---Bob Gross---

No, I am saying the charger was giving a wrong (full charge) indication with a battery that had a dead short (not wrong?). :)

[robertwgross]

No, I am saying the charger was giving a wrong (full charge) indication with a battery that had a dead short (not wrong?). :)

You just agreed with my premise. You are saying that the battery had failed (one fault) and that the charger was showing a wrong indication (second fault). Seems awfully coincidental.

I'll bet we have something fishy going on in the voltage regulator device that is supposedly inside the battery pack. But that would not explain it all.

---Bob Gross---

[steven]

The charger is showing that the battery is charger because of the way chargers detect that state.

Chargers don't measure voltage to determine if the batter charger. This would not make sence as the charger is applying a set voltage to the batter to charger it.

The charger is measuring resistence. (This is where I could be backwards)
More resistence = less charge
Less resistence = higher chrage
As the resistence to the current charging the batter goes down the batter is charged. So if there is no resistence, as in the case of the dead battery, the charger would see that as a fully charged battery.

[ejwebb]

I purchased 2 of these and they have both worked fine for the last few months. I am actually amazed at how long the charges last - even when not in use. Hopefully that holds true going forward...

[jyrgen]

Didn't you by chance try to use those suckers BEFORE 5pm?

[wolf]

Didn't you by chance try to use those suckers BEFORE 5pm?

There you go, problem solved. :lol:

[MarkH]

This definately sounds like a faullty battery.

One point for Doc:
You say that voltage cannot change? What?
Under charge the voltage goes up, under a load the voltage goes down. As the battery gets low on charge the voltage will be lower (not so much diff under no load, but with a load it can quickly drop to under the devices threshold voltage).
I have seen a single cell with a voltage under load of 0.0V and under charge it goes straight to 11.8V, the charger quickly determines that the cell is fully charged because voltage is the only thing the charger can read and the voltage readings are really funky.

To Bob:
The charger is not wrong, everything it can read in the voltage level from the battery indicates that the battery is fully charged. Well that battery is as fully charged as it's willing to get in its completely faulty state. A battery with erroneous voltage readings is not that unusual if it is faulty.

My best advice:
Try the other battery and see if you can return the faulty one, maybe at this point with only the one faulty battery you could agree to a replacement battery. If you have a 2nd failure then you want a refund so you can buy better batteries elsewhere.

My experience:
Both my Canon batteries and both my Power 2000 batteries are going strong after about 18 months and 12000 shutter activations. The Power 2000 batteries have a longer run time though (this is expected, they are rated at 1500mAh compared to Canon's 1100mAh).

[robertwgross]

The charger is showing that the battery is charger because of the way chargers detect that state.

Chargers don't measure voltage to determine if the batter charger. This would not make sence as the charger is applying a set voltage to the batter to charger it.

The charger is measuring resistence. (This is where I could be backwards)
More resistence = less charge
Less resistence = higher chrage
As the resistence to the current charging the batter goes down the batter is charged. So if there is no resistence, as in the case of the dead battery, the charger would see that as a fully charged battery.

Your message is difficult to parse. The last sentence contains another contradiction, because there is a big diffference between a shorted battery and a dead battery.

---Bob Gross---

[Olegis]

As far as I know, the charger determines whether to charge the battery or not strictly by measuring the voltage of the battery (under a load maybe). There are surprisingly sophisticated charging algorithms working inside those "simple-looking" devices.

[imagesense]

The real test is how many of the same kind of batteries from After5pm are not working correctly. If there are enough of those then you can claim they suck. I have some from there as well but as yet have not put them to the test.
I will start out with them in my 20D at my next wedding (two weeks) and post the results if I have any problems. So far I have been able to shoot an entire wedding on the two batteries in the battery grip - with one showing it still had a full charge!


Lou

[steven]

Your message is difficult to parse. The last sentence contains another contradiction, because there is a big diffference between a shorted battery and a dead battery.

---Bob Gross---

Charger measures the amount of amps it takes to push the voltage through the batter. This is the resistance to the current.

When a battery becomes fully charged the amps needed to push the voltage through the battery goes down. The resistence is less.

When a battery is shorted there is no resistence. So the charger would need very small amount of amps to push the voltage through. So the charger thinks the batter is charged.

A bad battery would need very low amps to push the voltage through the battery. Again the charger would think the battery was charged when it was not.

I'm not trying to explain why a battery goes bad just why a charger would think the battery was charged when it was not.

[robertwgross]

Charger measures the amount of amps it takes to push the voltage through the batter. This is the resistance to the current.

When a battery becomes fully charged the amps needed to push the voltage through the battery goes down. The resistence is less.

When a battery is shorted there is no resistence. So the charger would need very small amount of amps to push the voltage through. So the charger thinks the batter is charged.

A bad battery would need very low amps to push the voltage through the battery. Again the charger would think the battery was charged when it was not.

I'm not trying to explain why a battery goes bad just why a charger would think the battery was charged when it was not.

Steven, I think you have your electronics turned around. Current flows, not voltage. This "pushing the voltage" stuff is hooey.

---Bob Gross---

[Fredinpa]

The term is electron flow and engineers believe it is from neg to pos. batteries usually short because the internal plates touch together not allowing the chemical reaction to take place and make voltage.I do not like to use the word short becouse it is a reference to gnd and that is not happening.

[robertwgross]

The term is electron flow and engineers believe it is from neg to pos. batteries usually short because the internal plates touch together not allowing the chemical reaction to take place and make voltage.I do not like to use the word short becouse it is a reference to gnd and that is not happening.

No, the term "short" is not a reference to ground. "Short" is simply a term for when two voltage nodes have a fault connecting them, and it might be a hard short (zero ohms) or it might be a slow short (abnormally low ohms).

Batteries can go bad for multiple reasons. If internal cells go into a shorted condition, then you may loose a major portion of the open circuit terminal voltage. In other words, the 8 volt battery suddenly becomes 4, or something like that. Lithiums don't go this way very often. A common battery failure point is if internal resistance increases. Normally internal resistance builds up slowly over its life. Since current flowing out of the battery passes this resistance, power is lost. If the internal resistance builds up too much, then the battery will look poor. Its open circuit terminal voltage (like with a voltmeter) will look relatively normal, but that is because there isn't much current passing the internal resistance, so there isn't much power loss, so it looks relatively normal. But when you drop a load on it, the increased current passing the internal resistance causes the battery's effective power delivery to look really bad. In other words, the camera might show a low battery icon even when the battery is fresh out of the charger. Or, worse yet, the camera might not even start up successfully, and it might not have enough delivered power to light up the icon to show a flat battery.

What I guess is that a Canon charger might sense current flow into the battery that it is charging. If the battery is 7 volts open circuit, then the charger pumps a certain amount of current into it until the battery comes up to 8 or 8.5 volts. At that time, it can't pump any more, so the charging current goes to zero. Then the charger indicates "steady LED" which means that (it thinks) the battery is full. If some battery fault (such as very high internal resistance) was present, then the charger could not pump any current into it, and the charger might show "steady LED" even though the battery isn't much good. In other words, if the battery was "high resistance", it might show this way, and that is certainly not the same as "shorted", but it might seem this way.

I think that the only practical way to get a good measurement on a battery is to measure its terminal voltage with some nominal load present. Most of the time, we shouldn't have to go to this trouble. Industrial users of batteries do it some. The battery icon on the camera measures with a nominal load present.

The question that we have not addressed is this: What makes a relatively new battery suddenly go high resistance? If it were overcharged, I could understand it, but most of the Canon chargers are intelligent enough to taper off the charge current when a certain point is reached. If the battery had been abused, cooked, frozen, or otherwise stepped upon, I could believe that, but I doubt if the users here do that to their batteries. If there had been a fault in the camera system, like with an I.S. lens that is constantly working, or with an autofocus motor that is running constantly, then I could understand it a little.

Maybe it is just that one out of a hundred batteries that suddenly goes bad.

---Bob Gross---

[Fredinpa]

I still don’t like the word short so let’s call it by its full name short circuit and it occurs when current takes an accidental path short of its intended circuit. It thus does not flow in its normal circuit and serve the connected load. Short circuits often involve the regular circuit conductors and are caused by the creation of a path of lower resistance than that of the normal circuit.

If you would please describe what a node is. I have heard this tern in reference to communication systems but not voltage sources?

NiMH batteries or Nichol metal hydride produce about 1.2 to 1.3 volts so to achieve the desired voltage and amperage you will have to create a series and parallel circuit with the cells. If any of the cells in the series part of the circuit failed there would be a voltage drop like you described.

The other great killer of battery is vibration or the current regulation card in the battery is very cheap. Back to that old adage you get what you pay for.

Sorry for all the non Photography discussion Robert and I are probably boring all of you.

[robertwgross]

If you would please describe what a node is. I have heard this tern in reference to communication systems but not voltage sources?


I don't think it is within the scope of this forum to go into basic DC circuit theory. A circuit node is the same as a systems node. A DC voltage can be measured at any node of a circuit, and DC current can be measured flowing in any link of a circuit. Links connect nodes.

Do a web search on Kirchoff's Laws.

---Bob Gross---