Synergy Batteries -- Can anyone comment?

On Wed, 07 Jul 2010 12:38:58 -0400, Dave Cohen wrote:


While I'm posting, will someone tell me how I can determine who owns or
doesn't own a camera in this group.

You mean you can't tell just from their words alone? Holy ****. I'd say the
percentage of those who actually own cameras in these newsgroups is about
5%-12%. The rest give such misleading and wrong advice that their lack of
ever having been near a camera is blatantly obvious. You mean it's not that
obvious to you? That might mean you've also never been near a camera.

On Wed, 07 Jul 2010 12:38:58 -0400, Dave Cohen wrote:

John Navas wrote:
rOn Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:25:56 -0700, in
, SMS
wrote:

On 06/07/10 6:21 AM, Robert Sneddon wrote:
In , J. Clarke
writes
There appear to be two "Synergy" battery product lines, one produced by
Hahnel in Germany and the other by Synergy Digital in Brooklyn, NY.
The Hahnel product appears to be an Eneloop clone while Synergy appears
to be importing Chinese-clone OEM-replacement camera batteries.
The Sanyo Eneloop low-discharge NiMH battery technology is being
licenced more widely nowadays.
Is it being licensed or are other companies just building their
batteries in a similar manner? What Sanyo did with the eneloop product
is not rocket science--the technology for reducing self-discharge in
Nickel based batteries is not new.

The problem is that same design changes that reduce self-discharge also
reduce capacity, and we were seeing something similar to megapixel wars
with mAH wars. People just got fed up enough with self-discharge that
they were willing to go with eneloop AA cells at 2000mAH versus regular
NiMH AA cells which have up to 50% greater capacity.

While the eneloop, and other low self-discharge cells, solve one of the
major problems with NiMH cells, they still have most of the drawbacks of
AA cells in general, and NiMH cells in particular.

More information is available at "http://misinformedtrolls.com/".

Your own website. And another area is which you try to pass yourself
off as an expert even though you have no real expertise. Why am I not
surprised.


You are missing an important observation made earlier my Mr. Connor. The
cells are superior to eneloops since they are 1.25v as opposed to the
measly 1.25v of eneloops.

Normal NiMHs are rated at a base voltage of 1.2v, not 1.25v suggesting a
different chemistry. Yes, there's a range of voltage from full charge to
discharge, but all NiHMs I've bought were rated at 1.2v.

On 07/07/10 12:06 PM, Chris Malcolm wrote:
In rec.photo.digital wrote:
On 06/07/10 3:53 AM, Robert Spanjaard wrote:

While there are rechargeable Li-Po and Li-Ion cells that are the
physical size of an R6 cell, (14500), the chemistry yields 3.6-3.7
volts.

The ones I use have a nominal voltage of 3.7V and a fully charged
voltage of 4.2V.

Yes that's correct. The no-load fully-charge voltage of Li-Ion falls to
3.6-3.7 volts quickly under load. One advantage of the Li-Ion batteries
is that the voltage is proportional to the remaining charge so an
accurate battery gauge is possible. With AA cells, the remaining battery
capacity is less clear because it's so dependent on the type of AA cells
being used.

NiMH cells have a very non-linear discharge curve while manganese and
lithium non-rechargeables are linear, but with different voltages.

The battery voltage indicator in CHDK is a useful feature but it would
be nice if there was a CHDK feature that let you set the battery type
and mAH capacity and provided a gauge based on that, that used a look-up
table rather than showing a linear percentage based on voltage. Alas
that's a complicated thing to do, and at least what CHDK provides is
better than what Canon provides on AA powered cameras. On Li-Ion powered
cameras the CHDK battery indicator is very good but you want to be sure
to set the voltage levels properly or you'll wonder why a fully charged
Li-Ion battery is only at 90% (with the default setting).

On 7/7/2010 12:52 PM, SMS wrote:
On 07/07/10 9:38 AM, Dave Cohen wrote:

You are missing an important observation made earlier my Mr. Connor. The
cells are superior to eneloops since they are 1.25v as opposed to the
measly 1.25v of eneloops.

LOL.

Sanyo didn't need rocket scientists to claim a unique process, just a
patent (which I assume the have).

Getting a patent is easy. Defending it is the hard part.

The cause of self-discharge in Ni-Cad and NiMH batteries has been well
known since they were first invented--the plates swell and press against
the separator. You can reduce the swelling by depositing less active
material on the plates, but this reduces capacity. The goal in NiMH
batteries was always higher capacity. Sanyo made a decision to reduce
the capacity and decrease the self-discharge. I wonder if anyone is
actually paying them royalties or licensing fees for this.

While I'm posting, will someone tell me how I can determine who owns or
doesn't own a camera in this group.

A P&S or a D-SLR?

I won't question your comments on how these things are made since I
don't know. However, using the same capacity rating (around 2100 mah),
eneloops clearly outperform the normal NiMH of same capacity for shelf
life, so I assume they are doing something different. I normally shoot
very infrequently and I've left cells in the camera for over a year.
When I first got the eneloops I ran them down in a Canon A95 over a
three week period and got an amazing 600+ shots (very little flash, very
little lcd use). After that I got 300+ within a year, after that I
didn't keep track (after that the A95 went belly up and I'm back to my
old A40).

When the eneloop first came out, I did read they had been licensed to
others. As for asserting/defending patents, that's how lawyers make a
living (and a very good living at that).

On 08/07/10 2:20 PM, Dave Cohen wrote:

When the eneloop first came out, I did read they had been licensed to
others. As for asserting/defending patents, that's how lawyers make a
living (and a very good living at that).

I use a lot of eneloops around the house, remote controls, Bluetooth
mice, and my kids A570 Canon cameras. Great product.

OTOH, I still greatly prefer Li-Ion batteries. The self-discharge is
about the same, around 3% for non-micro-controller equipped packs, and a
little more for smart batteries, which compares favorable with eneloops,
but Li-Ion batteries have some desirable characteristics that NiMH
batteries can't touch, especially much more accurate battery gauging. A
Li-Ion pack will always have a built in temperature sensor and the
capacity can be calculated by measuring the voltage (declines linearly
with remaining capacity), temperature, and by knowing the discharge
rate. If you really want to get fancy you can do things like the iPhone
does with the xxxx controller, including counting coulombs, as the smart
batteries do.

On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 17:20:23 -0400, Dave Cohen wrote:

On 7/7/2010 12:52 PM, SMS wrote:
On 07/07/10 9:38 AM, Dave Cohen wrote:

You are missing an important observation made earlier my Mr. Connor. The
cells are superior to eneloops since they are 1.25v as opposed to the
measly 1.25v of eneloops.

LOL.

Sanyo didn't need rocket scientists to claim a unique process, just a
patent (which I assume the have).

Getting a patent is easy. Defending it is the hard part.

The cause of self-discharge in Ni-Cad and NiMH batteries has been well
known since they were first invented--the plates swell and press against
the separator. You can reduce the swelling by depositing less active
material on the plates, but this reduces capacity. The goal in NiMH
batteries was always higher capacity. Sanyo made a decision to reduce
the capacity and decrease the self-discharge. I wonder if anyone is
actually paying them royalties or licensing fees for this.

While I'm posting, will someone tell me how I can determine who owns or
doesn't own a camera in this group.

A P&S or a D-SLR?

I won't question your comments on how these things are made since I
don't know. However, using the same capacity rating (around 2100 mah),
eneloops clearly outperform the normal NiMH of same capacity for shelf
life, so I assume they are doing something different. I normally shoot
very infrequently and I've left cells in the camera for over a year.
When I first got the eneloops I ran them down in a Canon A95 over a
three week period and got an amazing 600+ shots (very little flash, very
little lcd use). After that I got 300+ within a year, after that I
didn't keep track (after that the A95 went belly up and I'm back to my
old A40).

The charger used makes a very big difference.

My very first NiMH batts and charger (the charger bought for pennies, it
was thrown in as a freebie on 12 generic NiMHs for $12, battery brand-name
"TelePower") fast-charges then after full charge switches to a
trickle-charge to top off the batteries, to circumvent the internal
resistance that causes their self-discharge. The batteries can be left in
the charger indefinitely without discharging with near-to-no harm to the
batteries.

This nearly free charger charges all my NiMH batteries wonderfully. It also
has a full discharge mode to freshen old NiCd batteries. This appears to be
the very first charger that Maha used to sell for about $25-35 that I
basically got for free. Now there's a Maha rip-off if I ever saw one. Their
appearance and functions are identical. It also has a 12v adapter cord for
it. I also use it with my compact folding solar-panels on extended
photo-treks.

Compare to all chargers I've gotten bundled with NiMH battery sets since
then, not ONE of the newer chargers (and there's about 10 from all manner
of main mfg's., Energizer, Rayovac, Sony, DuraCell, etc. in a junk-box now)
tops off any batteries properly. Not even their own batteries.

Surprisingly those 12 generic "TelePower" NiMHs from over 11 years ago
still keep going and going and going as well. I so wish now I had bought
about 10 sets of them. Plus each purchase would have given me an extra free
charger THAT ACTUALLY WORKS.

"John Navas" wrote in message
...
[]
Attention students -- note how SMS is trying to quietly, hoping nobody
will notice, change his story on measuring remaining Li-ion capacity as
a result of my pointing out the basic nonsense he had posted in the
first place, a classic example of Baloney Maximus.

--
John

Not much of an encouragement to learn from you, then? Do you not praise
the student who learns rather than disparage them?

On 08/07/10 11:20 PM, David J Taylor wrote:
"John Navas" wrote in message
...
[]
Attention students -- note how SMS is trying to quietly, hoping nobody
will notice, change his story on measuring remaining Li-ion capacity as
a result of my pointing out the basic nonsense he had posted in the
first place, a classic example of Baloney Maximus.

--
John

Not much of an encouragement to learn from you, then? Do you not praise
the student who learns rather than disparage them?

LOL, no story is changing. You can look at the various application notes
from the companies that make fuel gauge chips and they will all explain
that capacity is a function of mainly of voltage, with dependencies on
temperature, and discharge rate. They will even have graphs showing the
voltage versus capacity at different discharge rates and temperatures.
This is one of the ways the temperature sensor inside a Li-Ion pack is used.

If you Google "li-ion fuel gauge application note" you can find plenty
of evidence that what I wrote is correct (and that what Navas believes
is wrong--as usual), not only on fuel gauging, but on self-discharge.

"SOC—Because of a strong correlation between SOC and OCV for particular
Li-ion battery chemistry, the SOC can be estimated from the OCV of the
battery. The OCV I sic measured when the cells are in relaxation mode,
which is defined as the state of the battery when its current is below a
small threshold (such as 10mA) and when the cell voltage is stabilized."

"http://www.eetasia.com/ART_8800508929_765245_NT_7bef2305.HTM"

For self-discharge rates, the Maxim app note at
"http://www.maxim-ic.com/app-notes/index.mvp/id/3958" has a table that
shows the following:

Table 1. The Self-Discharge Rates of Common Battery Types

Chemistry Self-Discharge/Month
--------- --------------------
Lead-acid 4% to 6%
NiCd 15% to 30%
NiMH 30%
Lithium 2% to 3%

For a camera pack that lacks a CPU for coulomb counting, this rate is
accurate, and actually it's incorrect to call it self-discharge for
Li-Ion batteries, it's actually a combination of two things, 1) the
voltage monitoring circuit uses some power all the time, and 2) a
fully-charged Li-Ion pack loses about 20% a year of capacity.

BTW, this Maxim application note also includes a nice chart, figure 5,
that shows the linear decline in voltage of a Li-Ion cell for most of
the capacity, i.e. an 8AH cell has a linear decline between around 1AH
and 7AH (depending on the discharge rate). They also state that using
solely voltage to measure capacity "purely voltage-based monitoring is
unlikely to provide charge-level accuracies better than 25%." That's why
you need to also know the discharge rate (well characterizes in a
digital camera, and the temperature (monitored via a temp sensor in the
battery pack).

While coulomb counting (keeping track of coulombs-in (during charging)
and coulombs-out (during discharging), combined with voltage and
temperature monitoring (along with keeping track of charge cycles and
age) is preferred for the most accurate gauging, this is not done in
most camera batteries because of the cost. It's done in consumer
products like the iPhone which uses a smart fuel gauge chip.

The problem with NiMH cells is that the voltage difference between 90%
charged and 20% is nearly flat. You would need a set of very accurate
voltage references to use with comparators and A/D converters to
accurately gauge NiMH and the other types of AA batteries that can be
used in the low end cameras that use AA batteries. That's not going to
happen in a $100 camera. Even the SX20IS, probably the best super-zoom
on the market, does not have a way to set the type of AA battery being
used. If you install CHDK then you can set some voltage thresholds which
give you more information on the state of charge, but it's still
dependent on voltage.

The MB-D200 vertical grip for the Nikon D200 can take six AA batteries
or two EN-EL3E batteries. In order to ensure a more accurate battery
level indicator, there is a way to tell the camera which type of
batteries you are using, Li-Ion, or one of four types of AA batteries
(all of which have different characteristics).

I've updated the web site "http://batterydata.com/" with more
information on how fuel gauging works. It's been one of my areas of
expertise over decades in the semiconductor industry.