Emergency Power Charger

[saakmotu]

While looking for other things, I ran across this interesting "Emergency Power Charger"

http://www.xpcgear.com/dc40unempoch.html

If anybody has one, please comment on how well it works (or doesn't work).

Seems a little better than the battery extenders which are on the market as this one claims it can actually charge the battery.

I would have to assume that the 9v charge is dropped down to 5.0v input that the Z expects. But, aren't 9 volt batteries usually low in mAh? I don't know how it would fully charge the 1500mAh slab that is the 6000 battery.

Anyways, I thought it was interesting enough to share, at least.

[pelrun]

My homebuilt battery extender with 4 NiMH AA's has absolutely no trouble charging the battery; as I would expect of any commercial ones that use the same. I would harbour very grave doubts about whether this device could, though - like you say, 9v batteries aren't especially capacious.

Perhaps if you were using one of those high-power lithium types, but honestly, how often do you have one of those lying about?

[saakmotu]

If you're using NiMH then you're only getting 1.2v out of each cell, correct?

I tried this on my 5000d but it would only give me a flashing charge LED and eventually led to its bricked state (not directly because it fried the unit, but because it seemed to confuse the internal charging system to the point where the battery wouldn't charge over 40% [perhaps that was due to age, but it wasn't an issue prior to that] which then led me to muck around in the Diag Menu and to do things in there that I shouldn't have).

If you're using 4 - 1.2v NiMH cells on your 6000, then I might try it again and hope for the best.

Did you incorporate any other components in your homemade extender? e.g. resistor, diode?

With the 9v charging thing, a 9v is basically 6 small 1.5v in parallel, so I can't think of how it might work as advertised. Regardless, you're only working with a few hundred mAh.

[pelrun]

No extra components - just directly wired. Diode voltage drop would be too great unless I switched to alkalines (haha no chance.) My 860 seems to handle 4.8v fine, although I haven't needed to use it more than a few times so far.

Ok, now I have to concede that perhaps the commercial extenders wouldn't have such a great time with charging, since they'd need the diode to save users who put cells in backwards. The 9v extender would be able to supply 5v with no problems, so charging should work... for a little while, at least. You certainly wouldn't get more than a partial charge from one, though.

[neuroshock]

I use a fairly generic 4 AA battery "battery extender" that I purchased off of ebay, it has an on/off switch a green led that lights when turned on, but it has no selector switch for different battery types.  I have had no problems such as those you describe at all.  (I've used this with both my old 5500 and currently my 6000L) I've used NiMh (total of 4.8v) as well as alkaline disposables (total of 6.0v) with identical results except the alkalines last a lot longer of course.
I'd be leery of this 9v device, even if it worked at all it would be exhausted WAY before a 4x AA unit. Ohms law cannot be cheated, there just isn't enuf juice in a 9v!

Be Well,
-NeuroShock