Warning! after5pm.net batteries SUCK!

I got 2 batteries from them...



http://after5pm.net …D&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

This sucks

DocFrankenstein wrote:
I got 2 batteries from them...



http://after5pm.net …D&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

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---

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.

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.

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

---Bob Gross---

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---

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---

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

wolf wrote:
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---

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.

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...

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

There you go, problem solved.

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).

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---