Battery Charging: The Devil is in the Details

[John Nantz]

Interesting discovery about the NX800 camcorder, its battery, and how to charge it; learned the hard way…..

The camera would not turn on so it was connected to the AC charger overnight but no change; however, it still would not turn on. Question: is the battery dead? As in, “toast”? The battery was removed from the camera and tested with the Charge Button on the battery and it didn’t indicate there was any charge. Again, even after being charged all night.

A bit of a panic….these batteries aren’t cheap!

On p272 of the Help Guide [note: there are a lot of pages to read in the Guide], a flashing battery symbol indicates the battery is between 0 and 10V. Okay, good to know.
In the Help Guide section “Using a Battery Pack”, it mentions “Charging using the supplied battery charger”

With the battery in the Charger, after a short time, the LCD had a flashing ‘E’. After some additional time on the Charger, the battery was put in the camera and the LCD Monitor displayed a warning and there was also an alarm with a red light.

a. Measured battery voltages between the left + and the - (L > R): 12.49, 13.00 13.00 (falling).
b. Left + to right +: 12.45V
c. Right + to left -: 0.0, 0.0, and 0.0V.

After even more time, the E light [see battery picture] became solid and the adjacent light became blinking; so, good news. The lights indicate the battery is getting charged. (Whew).

In the Help Guide section “About the AC adaptor” on p46, it mentions “The battery cannot be charged while attached to the unit, even if the AC adaptor is connected.”. [my quotes]
Hmm….this is new. All my other Sony cams [X3000, AX53, AX700] can be charged with the battery in the cam!
Lesson learned: Charging the NX800 battery is different!

[Doug Jensen]

Those other cameras that you have mentioned don't use BPU batteries. BPU batteries cannot be charged onboard any camera.

[Andrew Smith]

Doug, is it something new or different with the technology in the BPU series batteries or did Sony just decide they weren't going to include the charging electronics in the camera from that point on?

Andrew

[Christopher Young]

No. Doug is correct. The only real difference is in the battery technology used. The cameras that run 14.4 volt battery systems just require a power system with more capacity to run the much higher levels of digital processing.

I don't know of any Sony camera that runs 14.4 volt batteries that have ever had internal battery charging. The bulk of Sony's 7.2 volt cameras have nearly always had internal charging capability. But they are predominantly in the amateur category. I prefer to charge externally, as that takes countless hours off the camera's electronics having to be active for non shooting hours. In the long run, all those hours would contribute to an earlier MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) for the camera. I would rather have a charger fail through electronic overuse than a camera.

Chris Young

https://www.eda-expert.com/en/2023/0...-electronique/

[Doug Jensen]

As Chris said, "they are predominantly in the amateur category". Exactly right.
Professional batteries are not charged onboard professional cameras. It just ain't done.
The cameras that use BPU batteries fall farther towards the professional end of the spectrum, therefore they are not designed to be cameras and battery chargers too. Not really designed to be card readers, either.