[HN Gopher] Building replacement proprietary battery packs
___________________________________________________________________
Building replacement proprietary battery packs
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 178 points
Date : 2020-10-22 13:02 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.hallaminventions.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.hallaminventions.com)
| dosman33 wrote:
| As far as I'm concerned this is one of the main killer apps for
| 3D printers - making battery packs for vintage electronics. It's
| great to breath new life into old equipment which just needs a
| shot of lithium to be revived. I'm not a huge fan of Thingiverse
| but I still try to curate a couple of battery related channels
| there:
|
| https://www.thingiverse.com/dosman33/collections/two-way-rad...
| https://www.thingiverse.com/dosman33/collections/power-tool-...
|
| I also released a universal battery charging cradle system I call
| the Gadget Hamper to help people out who design new battery
| packs: https://github.com/dosman33/Gadget-Hamper
| Topgamer7 wrote:
| Start using myminifactory like the rest of us who got pissed
| off with how they manage (well... don't manage) thingiverse.
| dheera wrote:
| I've thought of this but people also would need to use
| something durable, e.g. carbon-fiber-reinforced nylon.
|
| You definitely don't want your battery pack shattering if you
| drop it.
|
| The 3D printer world today seems to have an unfortunate love
| affair with PLA which is for both temperature and durability
| reasons a very bad choice for battery pack enclosures, and a
| bad choice for just about everything else. I'm really not sure
| how to get the word out there that PLA is outdated and should
| be deprecated for just about every 3D print use case.
| (Personally I use PETG For just about everything, but for a
| battery pack I'd probably want something carbon-fiber
| reinforced.)
| f0xf1re wrote:
| My former employer wraps battery packs in flexible fiberglass
| sheet before potting them in epoxy; it makes them shatter-
| resistant.
| dosman33 wrote:
| I've become a large user of PET-G for some of the reasons you
| outline. I've never had a problem with strength the way that
| I use it in my designs, PET-G is plenty durable for a small
| device which spends 99% of its life inside a larger device.
| Also the heat resistance makes it tolerate the summer heat of
| cars which is also important.
|
| Also PET-G has the added benefit of not giving me cancer like
| ABS. It definitely has a learning curve and I wouldn't fault
| anyone for going other routes rather than taking the time to
| get a feel for it.
| dheera wrote:
| Yep, same reasons.
|
| My printer prints PETG pretty cleanly with no fuss. I
| imagine if someone used the same exact printer (Prusa i3
| MK3), the same exact filament (eSun), my same exact
| settings (https://github.com/dheera/3d/blob/master/settings
| /slic3r-con...), and my same exact textured bed sheet, same
| exact procedure (Windex, then Magigoo, then print), they
| should have zero problems as well. It's not even tricky. It
| prints just like PLA with this "recipe".
|
| The only problem seems to be that there is a lot of
| conflicting information about what works for PETG but
| people just need to think in terms of configuration sets
| like the above. If you use the Prusa PETG settings with
| eSun filament it fails miserably -- the prints come off the
| bed mid-print.
| StillBored wrote:
| I think the larger concern should be fire safety. Normal 3d
| printer filaments don't have the fire retardants required by
| UL/etc for power electronics. I've experienced power supply
| and battery failures that were contained by their enclosures
| enough times in my life to take this very seriously. Had any
| of those cases been wrapped in common PLA/PTEG/ABS from a 3d
| printer, i'm sure it would have been much worse.
|
| So, if your printing anything that has a likelyhood of
| catching fire you should probably be doing it with something
| like: https://www.3dxtech.com/flame-retardant-
| filaments/firewire-f... or just wrapping that part of the
| design in sheet metal.
| dheera wrote:
| How does this flame retardant ABS work in the event of a
| lithium battery fire? Are there flame retardant PETG? Are
| they any better than just printing with normal filament and
| spraying flame retardant on it?
|
| I've been hesitant to use lithium batteries in home
| robotics projects, but I can't find charging and power mux
| boards for NiMH, so that has been a huge blocker in making
| robots that charge and operate at the same time.
|
| Also I wonder if it is possible to put mini pressurized CO2
| balls inside the battery enclosure such that if a fire
| happens they explode and release CO2, putting out the fire?
| StillBored wrote:
| I suspect to have the right answer you will need to read
| the relevant standards/cert and understand how it
| interacts with your design.
|
| But the general theory as I understand it generally is
| not that the plastic may not burn, only that they are
| self extinguishing. V-0 like that filament means it will
| extinguish itself within a maximum of 10 seconds after
| the ignition source is removed.
|
| Regular filament acts more like an accelerant, put a
| flame near it and it burns quite vigorously, and for a
| long time. Meaning anything near it that can burn will
| likely catch fire too.
| dosman33 wrote:
| You also have to realize things like this have to take
| scale into consideration. No one is going to do mass
| manufacturing of battery and electronics enclosures with 3D
| printing, this is a prototyping and hobby level
| manufacturing system. So the odds of injury and damage are
| a lot less with this as you automatically self-select down
| to a tiny fraction of the market share, and only a tiny
| fraction yet of those will ever experience an explosive
| outcome from a battery.
|
| Also I'm sure that most of this market violates someones IP
| so again, this ensures that this type of thing (custom
| making battery enclosures) will never reach a critical mass
| where worrying about the world burning down due to non-
| fireretardent plastics is something to be concerned about.
|
| But if a person is very concerned about this issue then
| certainly there are options out there.
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| > I'm really not sure how to get the word out there that PLA
| is outdated and should be deprecated for just about every 3D
| print use case.
|
| It works fine for 90% of use cases and is easy to use. Aside
| from that, you can buy virgin PLA filament which is pretty
| darn nontoxic. Most other plastics have a variety of negative
| effects on humans, from physical interaction with the
| finished product but also from the printing process.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| There is a slightly higher difficulty with petg, my first
| print was with pla and had no issues, with petg I have had
| slight heat shrinkage and adhesion problems
| marvin wrote:
| Slightly off topic, but I wish some company with capability in
| volume production of battery packs would develop a modular system
| of safe, reliable, light and economical battery packs. There's so
| much potential for various products that would benefit from
| having multi-kWh storage capacity available, and this potential
| will only increase as the cost per kWh drops further.
|
| As a case in point, this Slovenian company makes sustainer
| systems for sailplanes, which is awesome, but their system is
| limited to two battery packs. I imagine that pack design, form
| factor and availability is a big limiting factor in projects such
| as these.
|
| http://www.front-electric-sustainer.com/technology.php
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| I think most people interested in this already string together
| their own packs with 18650 cells.
|
| Apart from that, I wouldn't feel comfortable creating packs
| that could be fire hazards if the users do things like mix cell
| types or quality or capacity.
| marvin wrote:
| You don't want to string together a homemade pack of 18650
| cells and put them in the wing of an aircraft, or anywhere
| else a fire will be particularly dangerous.
|
| My point is, I'm sure there's a market for modular battery
| packs that have actually made these considerations, along
| with charging/discharging management, power electronics,
| insulation/cooling/heating and so on.
| smattiso wrote:
| YES! I have been toying around with this concept and there are
| no good solutions right now.
|
| There are few providers doing something similar (Vruzend off
| the top of my head), but they all have huge downsides.
|
| What I would love is: 1.) Integrated high quality BMS. 2.)
| Modular design so that I can add capacity or voltage simply
| without welding. 3.) High amp discharge capability. 4.) SAFETY!
| Can be used in electric mountain bikes, eFoils, electric
| paramotors, whatever. Vibration, drops, etc. do not disturb the
| cells or the pack.
|
| If you could accomplish this then you would unlock so many cool
| features. 1.) Construct your own packs regardless of voltage or
| size requirements. 2.) Travel on airplanes with your batteries!
| Deconstruct the pack simply and store in <100Wh battery blocks
| or as 18650 cells and you can take theoretically an unlimited
| amount of lithium across oceans (likely limited somehow). 3.)
| No vendor lock in. 4.) When your BMS tells you that a certain
| subpack has failed just pop the cells out easily and replace
| the one that is busted. 5.) Because of #4 far better for the
| environment and cheaper.
|
| Does anybody have any thoughts about how to bring this to
| fruition?
|
| The Vruzend thing works but is clunky, has low amperage
| capacity because of the bus bars, and the BMS is not
| integrated.
|
| If anybody has thoughts I would VERY much appreciate it.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Seems like you're describing this product exactly:
|
| https://ebikes.ca/product-info/grin-products/ligo-
| batteries....
|
| By the way, the company that makes this, Grin Technologies,
| is really great. I've toured their facility and met the
| owner. (I don't have any sort of stake in them, though).
| marvin wrote:
| There must be a startup working on this. If not, it sounds
| like a ripe thing to try out.
| mhb wrote:
| I'd like to do this for my old Thinkpads since I don't trust the
| random brand replacements to either last a decent amount of time
| or not blow up. Is there a source of loose matched cells and the
| protection circuit? Ideally with a guide like the one in this
| post.
| rasz wrote:
| Depends on the model, for T420/T430/W420/W430/X220/X230 there
| is this:
|
| https://hackaday.com/2020/09/02/building-an-open-source-thin...
|
| https://beta.aceparent.me#/battery
| StavrosK wrote:
| Those batteries are generally 18650 cells welded together, but
| you do need a spot welder for that, and to figure out their
| voltage so you know how many to put in series. You may be able
| to just take the protection circuit out of the pack you have
| now.
|
| Sony and Panasonic are good 18650 vendors.
| foobarian wrote:
| I love to (or used to before we switched to WFH) check in on
| the battery recycling bins in the office and look for
| discarded laptop battery packs. Usually they are full of good
| 18650 cells (except for 1-2 bad ones that bricked the pack).
| StavrosK wrote:
| Oh yeah, that's usually like $40-$50 worth of cells just
| tossed.
| jacob019 wrote:
| It's not recommended, but I have soldered in replacement
| cells with a regular 30W iron. It can be as easy as open the
| pack, identify and replace bad cells, manually balance charge
| the cells (one at a time), tape the pack back together. It's
| a bit janky, because the plastic cases are sonic welded and
| you have to butcher them a bit to get them open and then glue
| or tape them back together, but it can be difficult to locate
| batteries for old laptops and I don't want to spend money.
| StavrosK wrote:
| The problem with soldering them with an iron is that you
| get the cells way too hot by the time solder has managed to
| melt, even if you're quick about it.
| jacob019 wrote:
| Not if you work quickly and use 63/37 0.6mm rosin core
| tin-lead solder with a 30W iron. I never need to apply
| the iron for more than half a second. I've done this more
| than a few times, and I realize that it goes against
| standard safety recommendations, but I'm going to keep
| doing it.
|
| And if you're recycling cells from other packs, they are
| likely to have remnants of old tabs still connected, so
| you can solder to the tabs instead of directly on to the
| cells, which gives a little more thermal wiggle room.
| samatman wrote:
| You can also stick the cells in the freezer before
| soldering. It adds a fraction of a second to coming up to
| temperature, and gives the cell proper a lot more thermal
| wiggle-room. Nothing bad will happen if you keep them
| above about -20deg C.
|
| Definitely file this under "bad advice you probably
| shouldn't follow, and don't tell them I sent you", but
| 'allegedly' this works...
| mhb wrote:
| I didn't think that the absolute series voltage would matter
| much - the right number of cells will be close enough for the
| voltage regulation in the laptop. My big concern with that
| approach is matching the cells. It's not practical for me to
| do that myself since I would need to test a lot of cells. Or
| maybe I am overestimating the negative consequences of using
| unmatched cells. But I don't think so.
| StavrosK wrote:
| How do you mean matching them? Just get 8 NCRs or whatever
| and that's that.
|
| The absolute series voltage matters in that you don't want
| to over- or undervolt it by 3.7V usually.
| mhb wrote:
| Matched in terms of voltage and discharge
| characteristics. Many of the battery guides mention the
| possibility of the weakest cell in an unmatched pack
| being improperly charged. And that that would result in
| shorter life for the pack or worse consequences.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Hmm, I was assuming the charger would have a balancer, if
| it doesn't you can get in trouble, yes.
| mhb wrote:
| Maybe you are right that it is a balancing charger. That
| would simplify things a lot. Although some of the packs
| have some of the cells in parallel so would have to be
| carefully matched.
| abawany wrote:
| I have the same problem except it is the battery pack for my
| original Sony Aibo (1st gen robot dog.) I had the cells
| replaced once using an eBay service but they didn't last very
| long.
| qz2 wrote:
| Not that easy. They have a battery management controller which
| contains cell charge data and a fuse which bricks the pack if
| it's not handled properly.
|
| Have a good look around on the internet.
| mhb wrote:
| I've looked plenty and I think I can handle the issues with
| the controller though it would be better if I could just
| replace it. I guess I could also get a quality battery pack
| (Turnigy?) and take apart the cells, but I'd prefer to buy
| matched loose cells from a known-good brand (Sony,
| Panasonic). I haven't seen anyone selling matched loose cells
| though.
| francis_t_catte wrote:
| For a while I was scrapping dead laptop batteries to build
| an 18650 pack for my esk8 build. I ended up building a
| battery validation rig with a Turnigy battery charger that
| charges the battery to 4.2V, drains it to 3.8V, and charges
| it back up to 4.2V to figure out its true storage rating.
| Then I sorted them by manufacturer, model, and storage
| capacity, with a recycling bin for anything below 80% of
| their rated capacity, open cells, and shorted cells.
|
| It's a lot of work, but the validation was all automated
| via the charger. The pack I ended up with had healthy cells
| all within 10% of each other in terms of capacity.
| nullc wrote:
| FWIW, old thinkpad batteries make for a great source of 18650
| cells to use in flashlights.
|
| Usually only one of them in a dead pack is bad and the rest are
| great.
| Daniel_sk wrote:
| Using them in flashlights that take only one 18650 - fine.
| Using multiple ones - I am not taking the chances (mismatched
| li-ion is asking for trouble).
| nullc wrote:
| Assuming you charge them separately, I don't think there is
| an issue.
|
| (though usually I use flashlights that take one 18650).
| StavrosK wrote:
| After getting into drone racing (where you need to take good
| manual care of your batteries because they're basically a bunch
| of cells soldered together), I realized that every battery we
| have everywhere is just some standard cells in some standard
| configuration.
|
| With that knowledge, you can replace the battery in any gadget
| (small ones are usually 3.7V, or 1S), if you know how to care for
| it. Replacing the battery in a MiniDisk like this, I would maybe
| not trust the internal MiniDisk charger and charge by hand, but
| it should otherwise work identically to the factory battery.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| > I would maybe not trust the internal MiniDisk charger
|
| Why wouldn't you? It has same voltage and even same capacity
| (weird considering evolution, but maybe choice was deliberate).
| I dunno, but maybe MiniDisk charger even has temperature
| sensor.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| This might work if you're the kind of person to continue
| manually checking and caring for the battery pack, but it's not
| good advice for the average hobbyist.
|
| The crucial missing detail is that battery packs are assembled
| from identically matched cells, which age together as a unit.
| As soon as you replace a single cell with a new cell of the
| exact same model, or a new cell of a different capacity and
| charge characteristics, that cell will charge differently than
| the rest of the battery pack. This results in an unbalanced
| charge situation.
|
| If the battery pack has a battery management system with leads
| in between each cell to balance the pack, this might work. The
| BMS can drain off excess charge from the unbalanced cells and
| convert it to heat.
|
| If the battery pack does not have a BMS, the unbalanced charge
| situation can lead to pack failure, with varying degrees of
| smoke and flame depending on the battery chemistry.
|
| When in doubt, play it safe and just get a new battery pack.
| paulmd wrote:
| generally in these situations you'd be replacing all the
| cells at once, so they are reasonably matched. Nobody tears
| apart a battery and resolders everything just for one cell,
| that's a waste of time.
|
| and if you're really concerned about it, you can match cells
| for impedence yourself, but it's generally not a problem if
| you replace all the cells at once with cells of the same
| kind/batch/etc.
| StavrosK wrote:
| I was actually wondering how balance chargers work, do they
| really burn off excess voltage with resistors? I always
| assumed they applied extra voltage to charge the low cells,
| rather than discharge the high ones.
| coryrc wrote:
| Yes.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Yes, usually they use ADCs to read the voltage in between
| each cell in the series. If individual cells have higher
| voltage than other cells, a resistor for that cell is
| switched on to burn off excess charge.
|
| More advanced controllers can use flyback transformers to
| move charge from one cell to another. This is vastly more
| expensive than just using a resistor, though, so it's only
| used in applications where energy conservation is key, like
| solar projects or where heat is a constraint. The LTC3300
| is a good example:
| https://www.analog.com/en/products/ltc3300-1.html#
| StavrosK wrote:
| That's good to know, thanks!
| DenisM wrote:
| On a tangent, but... do you think it's possible to build a
| battery that discharges as a pack (in series), but charges
| each cell individually?
|
| I imagine it will require some creative wiring, but charging
| efficiency should then go through the roof, right? I image I
| went e-biking and returned to my car to recharge - having
| individually chargeable cell should reduce the overall charge
| time a lot.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| A battery management system handles this.
|
| You still charge the pack in series, but the BMS will
| discharge cells that have a higher voltage than others.
| This results in all cells having similar charge levels.
|
| It doesn't change the charge time, though. You're putting
| the same amount of energy into the pack either way. 14.8V @
| 100mA applied to 4 cells in series is the same energy as
| 3.7V @ 100mA applied to 4 cells individually. Can't escape
| the laws of physics.
|
| If power efficiency is critical (solar applications, for
| example), the BMS might have fancy switching circuitry to
| re-route energy from overcharged cells to undercharged
| cells. This is expensive, though, so most BMSs just use
| resistors to burn off extra charge from overcharged cells.
| DenisM wrote:
| > You still charge the pack in series
|
| I understand that's how it's done, but can we charge
| faster if we DECIDE NOT to charge in series? I take it
| the answer is no?
|
| Imagine a series of 14 cells. I could charge them as a
| whole, but there is normally some limit on how much power
| I can pump into it. Now suppose that I disassembled the
| series and now I have 14 cells that I can charge
| independently before re-assembling them back. If I did
| that, would I gain anything? If nothing else this should
| prevent unbalanced charging, reducing overall heat of the
| pack and allowing higher current overall?
|
| I can see that some packs advertise 5a charge current and
| other packs of the same capacity offer 10a or even 15a.
| Wonder why is there such difference.
| reportingsjr wrote:
| It would be marginally faster (best case probably a
| percent or two) for a much more expensive charging
| circuit. The reason for this is that you can discharge
| batteries much faster than you can charge them.
|
| Also, it seems like you're imagining that you can charge
| batteries with more power if you charge them in parallel
| instead of series. This isn't true since you're just
| trading a higher voltage/lower current for a lower
| voltage/higher current.
| DenisM wrote:
| No free lunch for me then. Thanks for explaining.
| coryrc wrote:
| Not a problem, just expensive. Wires running to each
| individual would have to be larger than ones used just for
| sensing or small charge bleeding.
|
| I was considering a design where there was a PCB on every
| cell with an individual charger, but it's just more cost
| and parts to break, plus no redundancy (unlike having two
| big chargers in parallel).
| DenisM wrote:
| How about a middle ground then?
|
| Let's make a few 3-series batteries and charge them. When
| done charging we stack four of them together to get a
| single 12-series to power an e-bike. Would that allow for
| much faster charging?
| Johnythree wrote:
| No. Charging in Series or in Parallel still requires the
| same amount of power.
| samatman wrote:
| Absolutely, and this is not unheard of in custom e-vehicle
| wiring.
|
| You have a discharge circuit, in series, and a charge
| circuit, wired separately to each cell. You're only using
| one at a time, as long as everything is properly grounded
| they don't get in each other's way.
|
| It's not really about charge time though: any vehicle
| battery is going to discharge faster than it charges, so
| it's practical to just dump a bunch of current across the
| pack if you're charging using the same circuit.
|
| What it does, is takes good care of each individual cell,
| and if you log some metrics you can detect underperforming
| cells and replace them.
|
| I will say that for most applications, charging off the
| series wiring, and adding an overvoltage module that shuts
| off charge to each cell when it's topped off, is going to
| be much simpler and good enough.
|
| But it can be done.
| eecc wrote:
| I guess any fast charge pack has this, cars in particular.
| Pushing large currents thru strings of high impedance empty
| batteries must be dangerous and energy inefficient, while
| switching them to parallel configuration would make a world
| of difference. I'd be surprised if there weren't power
| routing circuits already available from major IC
| manufacturers.
| Johnythree wrote:
| The only difference between charging them in series or
| parallel is that the Volts/Current ratio changes.
|
| The actual power required does not change..
| eecc wrote:
| Doesn't it improve efficiency? Squeezing electrons
| through a string of exhausted batteries require current
| over a longer time and therefore more losses.
| OJFord wrote:
| Even off the shelf 9v batteries are typically 6x1.5v AAAA cells
| in series. (i.e. they actually are batteries)
|
| They can also be stacks of plates though, so buy a sample of a
| particular brand before you decide bulk-buying them is a
| great/cheap source of cells!
| kenward wrote:
| For many people integrating batteries into their projects, this
| is true and you can simply take most off-the-shelf cells with
| the right voltage profile and put them into some
| series/parallel config.
|
| At least with lithium-ion technologies, for larger
| applications, this ignores a lot of the degradation phenomena
| and electrochemistry of the battery.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Do you just reuse the battery management system (bms) that's
| already in the cell?
| tgtweak wrote:
| It is a single-cell battery so no onboard bms would typically
| be present - a look at the terminals confirms this. The
| charge and protection logic is built into the device which
| charges the battery itself.
|
| edit: http://forums.sonyinsider.com/topic/29187-lip-4wm-
| battery-re...
|
| A review of the original pack teardown reveals it has a small
| pcb with what looks like some voltage cutoff or thermal fuse.
| vicnov wrote:
| How does one can get into drone racing? Where should I start?
| StavrosK wrote:
| You buy a cheap controller (RadioMaster TX16S is the best
| value for money right now, at $120ish, but you can do quite
| well with a $30 FlySky), some goggles ($40 for some Eachine
| EV800D, I forget the exact model number), $150ish for a low-
| end starting 5" quad, and $30 for a 4S battery.
|
| I might also recommend getting a tiny whoop instead, those
| are very small drones for inside the house, they are super
| fun and you can fly them whenever you want, vs having to make
| a trip to a suitable location.
|
| That should get you started. Nowadays I much prefer acrobatic
| wings, though, I made a Flitetest Versa from Depron foam for
| like $30 and it's amazing fun.
| bittercynic wrote:
| I'm not having any luck finding the TX16S for that price,
| any suggestions?
| StavrosK wrote:
| Here is one, though it's a bit more expensive, I think
| maybe I used points to get the price lower:
|
| https://m.banggood.com/RadioMaster-TX16S-Hall-Sensor-
| Gimbals...
| StillBored wrote:
| very small drones for inside the house, they are super fun
| and you can fly them whenever you want
|
| House yes, anywhere with a fire suppression system _NO_.
| The little glass bulbs used in most of them don't react
| well to having a drone bump into them. Buddy of mine had
| this happen where he worked not long ago, you really don't
| want to be that person...
| anonova wrote:
| After buying a transmitter/controller, Liftoff
| (https://store.steampowered.com/app/410340/) is a great
| simulation to learn how to fly.
| nom wrote:
| You watch quadmovr [0] and google all the weird words in the
| video titles :D
|
| 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6wsa7StHaY
| kregasaurusrex wrote:
| Even though cells may exist with the same specs, it's hjighly
| recommended to create a battery pack from a single supplier and
| standardize on that. For example when I used to do professional
| laptop repair, I discovered the '18650' is only a size rather
| than a catch-all for all 12V cells, and isn't recommended to
| daisy-chain the various good ones together if they only share
| the same voltage. There's over a dozen different colors that
| indicate these batteries were built by various suppliers with
| use cases such as fast discharge rate, higher peak voltage,
| greater capacity, or a cost-effective battery that survives
| fewer discharge cycles. Creating a pack with mismatched
| batteries could cause the load balancer or device to operate
| outside of spec- don't cheap out on your power source!
| StavrosK wrote:
| Agreed (except you probably mean 3.7 V cells and not 12 V).
| Your cells should be as similar as possible to prevent uneven
| wear.
| spockz wrote:
| Is there a market for replacing battery packs of PHEV cars? The
| latest Passat GTE apparently has a 33% bigger capacity in the
| same volume. I would love to have more electric range in the same
| car. I am very hesitant though because automotive parts have to
| be resistant to higher stresses that consumer electronics like
| laptops.
| flobosg wrote:
| MiniDisc players were beautiful gadgets. I had one of the lower-
| end models but it was still a delight to use.
| inasio wrote:
| Coincidentally I found my old minidisc player just last week
| while sorting my box of old gadgets. I brought it to the car
| since I have a bunch of mix discs that turned out to have aged
| well. Mine runs off of a single AA battery, and after at least
| 10-15 years with no use it still had a charge. The Sony UI
| certainly was no Ipod...
| mikepurvis wrote:
| As a younger person who missed out, I recently enjoyed this
| mini-documentary-- especially the surprisingly lengthy history
| of the many devices for a supposedly "failed" format:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU3BceoMuaA
| solstice wrote:
| Great video that triggered some memories. Thank you for
| linking
| giantrobot wrote:
| MiniDiscs were technologically interesting but everything
| about them was a pain in the ass. In the US they were also
| stupid expensive in just about every aspect.
|
| Console MD player/recorders were ridiculously expensive in
| the US. Portable players were expensive but not nearly as bad
| as the mains powered console ones. This meant most people
| just went for CD players.
|
| Because they didn't sell well here music labels didn't
| release many (any?) MD albums in the US. That meant you were
| buying new albums from the "import" section of the store (if
| you had a record store that sold imports) for full integer
| multiples of CD album prices.
|
| Unless you were stupid rich then you bought blank MDs and
| recorded your own music on them. That didn't mean dropping
| tracks onto a playlist and pressing the "Burn" button. You
| had to plug your MD deck into an audio source, hit record,
| and then play the track/disc back in real-time. If you just
| did a whole CD at once it would record as one long track but
| you could go back and mark start and end points to break it
| into actual song tracks.
|
| So you either spent tons of money buying commercial MD albums
| or bought blank discs to make your own. Making your own discs
| meant every album you listened to required the cost of the
| blank disc and at _least_ an hour of your time to record it.
|
| Or you could just save yourself tons of money and effort and
| listen to CDs.
|
| Source: a friend of mine was obsessed with MiniDiscs and I
| thought they were cool until I spent an afternoon recording
| two discs. I realized my DiscMan was a way better deal.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Per the Wikipedia article [1], it seems like in the 2001
| timeframe there were "NetMD" devices which could receive
| digital audio directly from a computer at much faster than
| realtime; I imagine this was a direct response to the iPod
| and other MP3 players, and was probably too little, too
| late. Particularly when it sounds like the process was
| bogged down by making you use proprietary, copyright-aware
| software.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniDisc
| samatman wrote:
| I had a NetMD from Sony, and I absolutely loved the
| thing. I still have a couple disks I made, with no way to
| play them back.
|
| My apartment was burgled in 2003, and the insurance
| payout covered an iPod to replace the stolen minidisk
| player.
|
| Night and day, no comparison, that iPod was the coolest
| thing I owned at the time, and stayed that way for many
| years. It's in storage right now, but the last time I
| plugged it in, a couple years ago, it still worked. The
| battery is toast, though.
| giantrobot wrote:
| The NetMD players were way too little and way too late.
| While a NetMD player could load music via USB onto a disc
| the software on the PC was terrible and the process
| wasn't much better than recording from the line-in.
|
| If you were loading music from MP3 or WMA the software
| was transcoding those formats to ATRAC, NetMD players
| didn't natively support either format. So you went from
| one lossy compression to another. If your MP3s were
| already at the minimum threshold of quality because they
| came out of a shitty encoder they were just going to get
| worse in ATRAC.
|
| If you were loading WAVs into SonicStage your quality
| would be way better but you first had to rip your CD to
| disk and then load it in to SonicStage. So you had no
| time savings over ripping to MP3. ATRAC also had a bunch
| of DRM so it limited how many discs your could load a
| track on. Not an automatic problem but putting a song on
| more than a couple discs wouldn't work.
|
| Keep in mind that by the time NetMD players were out CD-R
| drive's were cheap and pretty common. A lot of CD players
| had also started supporting native MP3 playback and
| dedicated MP3 players were readily available.
|
| The extremely inconvenient NetMD experience was up
| against cheap CD-Rs, much more convenient MP3 players
| (including the iPod), and in general a better MP3
| experience. The whole MiniDisc ecosystem was just
| inconvenient unless you had spent a lot of money to live
| in some sort of end-to-end MiniDisc world.
| analog31 wrote:
| I still have my MD recorder. A few weeks after I discovered
| that I could make perfect digital recordings, I sold my mint
| condition Studer-ReVox B77 MkII reel-to-reel tape recorder to a
| friend, and never looked back. The B77 was a lovely thing, but
| a pain in the ass to haul around, and the tapes were
| exorbitant.
|
| I now have a little Tascam pocket digital recorder that I love.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| This is really interesting. I love coming across personal sites
| like these. Reminds me of the pre walled-garden internet.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I love this approach: clean, accessible, shareable.
|
| I have an old Nikon D1h SLR which I loved, but it used horrible
| Ni-MH battery packs that didn't last long--both in terms of shots
| per charge, and total lifetime. They're all dead and I can't
| bring myself to order another one, now that I'm used to li-ion
| packs in modern cameras. There's one German company that makes a
| compatible li-ion pack but they don't sell to the U.S. for some
| reason.
|
| There's a bunch of blog posts about how to take one of these old
| battery packs and jerry-rig it to accept a couple of rechargeable
| li-ion cells. But it looks like a pain--cutting open the old pack
| with a razor blade, gluing in battery tabs, etc. Maybe 3D
| printing would offer a better way to do the same thing...
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >but they don't sell to the U.S. for some reason.
|
| Shipping lithium batteries by themselves (as opposed to
| installed in/packed with equipment) is a huge pain in the ass
| to do internationally.
| ilikejam wrote:
| The battery he's ended up with looks like it does have charge
| protection after all (6-pin chip under the kapton tape), which is
| probably a good thing.
| rrmoelker wrote:
| How can you tell from the small image?
|
| I clicked through and the ebay link mentions: "Built-in
| protection circuit PCM for prevent over charging or over
| discharging."
| ilikejam wrote:
| The second-last pic in the article - there's a couple of
| 6-pin chips on the board.
| hourislate wrote:
| Awesome youtube channel. Here is the one he did on battery packs
| for hand tools.
|
| DIY super capacity BATTERY PACK
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ_dwesKFwY
| floatrock wrote:
| Good stuff to see how you can just take those packs apart and
| recombine them, but aren't you supposed to take care to match
| cells and make sure your BMS can balance the charging or risk
| letting the explosive magic smoke out? Seems like he just took
| any random cells and put them all together.
|
| He didn't really talk about any of that, so this approach feels
| like quite the fire hazard.
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