err99 on 1DmkIII identified

Hi all... Let me tell you a story...

Bought the Mark3 in June no issues worked well straight out of the box... Came with firmware 1.0.8..
When 1.0.9 came out I upgraded again no issues camera working as before...
then I upgraded to 1.1.0 and at about the same time swapped the battery for my spare which was free when I bought the camera....

Then the err99 started, not every time I switched on but about 1 in 3 say....
This has got worse over the last couple of weeks... Tried everything except swapping back to the original battery... You guessed it problem solved no more err99.. Just to confirm I re inserted spare and err99 re-appeared...

So I recalibrated the battery and then charged and I have cured the problem, both batteries and camera working fine......

What do you do to "recalibrate" a battery?

The Canon charger has a recalibrate option...... Not sure what it does or why it is needed but it cured my problem.... Was going to get the battery exchanged.... Hopefully won't have to now..

could be balancing the cells in the battery pack? that's all i can think of by 'calibrating'
but glad to know your problems have now gone

Thanks, that good to know Peter as I have just received a new battery, I checked the manual page 28 it states if the <cal/charge> lamp blinks red you need to recalibrate battery, I guess this was happening with you as I can't get the lamp to blink red to allow me to recalibrate.

Cheers

I'm pretty sure all it does is discharge the battery completely before re-charging to prevent the battery from getting a "memory" whereby it will not take a full charge, I think !

No memory effect in the battery. However, a lot of new batteries has a chip that keeps track of the charge state. This is both a convenience so you get a warning before it gets empty, but also needed with a lot of new chemistires. For example a Li-Ion battery may never, ever be allowed to overcharge or it will overheat or even start to burn.

That is a reason why a lot of new equipment has a note that your first charge must not be aborted in the middle, or this chip will learn to consider a half-empty battery as full.

That battery is a LiPo.. No memory what so ever.. But if it needs to be Recalibrated, Most likely it needs the cells balanced. Those cells can only have 3.3volts I do believe. Most lipo batteries are either 2C or 3C, In the Electric RC Planes, I have seen 5c, Big Juice for big props.. My gliders run on 3c packs.. They are for 11.1V.. The circuit will not let them over charge.. They literally explode into a ball of Fire if they either over or under charge..

Li-poly is just a variant of Li-Ion.

Please explain the "ball of Fire if they either over or under charge." (emphasis mine).

They loose capacity if discharged too low, but that should not result in any fire or explosion. Or where you thinking about results of a short-circuit?

If you try and charge one that has dropped to too low of a voltage an overheat condition and a fire can result. It's not the undercharge it's the charging of an over depleted battery.

yay! my theory of 'balancing cells' is backed up by a couple of people! how cool am i to be the first to say it? hehe
from what i remember (rcgroups - i'm into rc helis), they explode during charging and not discharging. i think if the current that's put in is too high, it blows up the cells and eventually explodes. i still remember pics of basements on fire coz of rc planes' batteries that were left charging and the user's gone upstairs to do something else. hence they say it's probably best to charge up li-po's in a pot or outside...to reduce fire damage to the surroundings!
and yeah - it's correct in that lipos can only have 3.3v per cell!

oh - and balancing cells mean the circuit checks both battery cells have the same amount of juice (voltage?). otherwise the charger could potentially overcharge one cell because the other cell is not full yet and the charger continues to charge ignoring the other cell which in turns over charges the other cell - and this is where damage can happen. (i do hope i'm correct in this paragraph!!!!!??)

Wow! This is a really interesting theory/concept/and thread .. lol!

I just got my 20D (it came with 3 batteries) and my 300D has 2.
After reading this thread, I kina wish I marked what batteries belonged to what body.

I was just playing around with my 20D and got an err99 .. I changed batteries, and for a few moments
the error stayed away. However, it came back soon after.
I also changed lenses earlier in the day (while playing with it) I used the Sigma 15-30 on it
and went back to the Canon 28-105 .. bang! Err99 !

I took the battery grip off, had a freshly charged battery .. and installed it .. fired off a few shots,
and everything seemed fine.
I then re-connected the grip with freshly charged batteries, and the issue seems to have left.
I also noted that in the top display, that the *battey symbol* was blinking.

I've since put the 15-30 on and off, then put the 80-400 Tokina on .. with the grip
and now back to the Canon 28-105. and all seems to be fine ..
I'm crossing my fingers and toes, and hoping this issue was just a low battery issue ..

Just how does one "recalibrate" a battery?

Thanks for an insightful read .. so far .. and errr, your prayers are requested .. lol!

Recalibrating is just a term for making sure that the cells are the same in voltage and Ah. It is just wasting a charge cycle to charge it and discharge. It would just be charging each cell to the same voltage and letting it sit for a to level it off, then recharging them.

Maybe I can shed some light on the subject, so to speak. Or possibly make it more complicated.

The correct term for "balancing cells" is equalizing. Equalizing of cells is achieved on the discharge, not the charge. Basically equalizing is bringing all the cells in a pack down to one standard variable voltage ie, 0.5volts. This is important for three reasons,

1) The cells will achieve the highest amount of capacity (milliamp hours) possible on charge because all the cells in the pack should reach their delta peak at the same time, so as that voltage then starts to drop back from the its peak voltage the charger will sense this and stop charging leaving the pack fully charged. This is a commonly used method of charging packs known as peak charging.

2) As already stated, to ensure the overcharging of a single cell in a pack does not occur on charging, all the cell voltages need to be close. This is because most standard chargers only detect pack voltage not individual cell voltage.

3) The most important reason of all is to guard against reversing the polarity of a single cell on discharge (0.1volts - 0.2volts = -0.1volts) This can be very damaging to the cell And eventually wreck the pack.

To be contiued...

So what does the recalibrate function on the Canon charger do? The short answer is; I have no idea. Equalizing can only be achieved if you have access to all the cells in the pack, and the charger can discharge those cells independently. But I don't know with out a pic of the charger and cells if the charger in question is capable of such a task.

There are a few other things that can be done to a battery pack that can regenerate the life in the cells somewhat; but I don't know what else could be termed "recalibrate".