Battery interfaces. We have a huge variety of batteries for a huge variety of devices. However, when you open the proprietary shell of these batteries what you often find inside is standardized 18650 cells. They have been playing us for absolute fools.
We, as consumers, really do need to step up our battery knowledge. I would say, general electronics should be a mandatory requirement. Heck it should be a major part of the curriculum.
That’s true, but it’s also a bit more complicated - you can’t just jam a handful of 18650 cells together and have it work. They need to be matched with cells having similar capacity and internal resistance and depending on the operating characteristics the tolerance can be quite low.
So it is possible to make your own packs or repair ones, but you have to test each cell in the existing pack, as well as test each cell your want to replace in and make sure that they’re all in tolerance to each other.
The ENG field has had two battery mount standards in the form of the V-mount and the Anton Bauer Gold Mount for decades now, and both are interchangeable; you could swap a Gold Mount plate for a V-mount plate or vice-versa.
And on the consumer front, Sony’s Infolithium might as well be standardized as there’s lights which use Infolithium packs and you can buy generic battery packs in that format and still be able to power your Handycam from the mid '90s, for example.
Those are some good examples, more of that please. Most of the lithium powered devices I’m using currently are power tools and they are exclusively repackaged 18650 and 21700 cells. It’s really not much of a technical challenge to make these things standardised but if there is no regulatory pressure it’s easy money for the OEMs and more toxic waste for us.
Battery interfaces. We have a huge variety of batteries for a huge variety of devices. However, when you open the proprietary shell of these batteries what you often find inside is standardized 18650 cells. They have been playing us for absolute fools.
We, as consumers, really do need to step up our battery knowledge. I would say, general electronics should be a mandatory requirement. Heck it should be a major part of the curriculum.
That’s true, but it’s also a bit more complicated - you can’t just jam a handful of 18650 cells together and have it work. They need to be matched with cells having similar capacity and internal resistance and depending on the operating characteristics the tolerance can be quite low.
So it is possible to make your own packs or repair ones, but you have to test each cell in the existing pack, as well as test each cell your want to replace in and make sure that they’re all in tolerance to each other.
The ENG field has had two battery mount standards in the form of the V-mount and the Anton Bauer Gold Mount for decades now, and both are interchangeable; you could swap a Gold Mount plate for a V-mount plate or vice-versa.
And on the consumer front, Sony’s Infolithium might as well be standardized as there’s lights which use Infolithium packs and you can buy generic battery packs in that format and still be able to power your Handycam from the mid '90s, for example.
Those are some good examples, more of that please. Most of the lithium powered devices I’m using currently are power tools and they are exclusively repackaged 18650 and 21700 cells. It’s really not much of a technical challenge to make these things standardised but if there is no regulatory pressure it’s easy money for the OEMs and more toxic waste for us.