The Powergorilla arrived yesterday, and seems to work with the GH2, though I've not tried it out either in the field, or continuously for a number of hours. The 8.4V setting only seems to output 8.2V, but this didn't stop the GH2 powering on. In the process of measuring the voltage, I accidentally created a short circuit. This led to the Powergorilla becoming unresponsive to anything - it wouldn't power up. I thought I'd smoked it, but plugging the charger in seemed to reset it. I guess that this is some kind of short circuit protection.

I had my 4300mha battery pack for roughly 6 months before it started to loose its charge. I haven't really charged it and re-charged it that much too. Its just the way they are unfortuatly, you could try and dis-charge them and recharge them up 3x-5x max. If it discharges in a short time thats a bad sign. This is why I had to look for another solustion to this problem because I didn't want to spend too much money replaceing them.

I am going to start looking at these 3rd party brands and see if they are totally crap or about the same since that save me some cash.

I have two of these Traxxas Hi-Energy packs 45000mAh and I haven't used them much (One I had last charged a month ago). So I charged them until the charge indicator went on and left them alone for a while. Now after trying both of them, I get the "this battery can't be used" on the camera after working for a few seconds. Do these battery packs lose charge this fast when left alone?

Right now, I'm charging one battery at 1A charge rate. Would this be better for the battery, even though they recommend 2A for a higher capacity battery? When I used the higher 2A, the charge lasted for only two hours, which seems short. The other battery would say it fully charged within 30minutes the first time, so I drained and tried to condition it through a few cycles which raised the charging time, but I still feel the charge should take longer for a full charge. Something funny about these batteries.

@sumo, ok I might get one just to see how long it lasts. I not loosing out on much anyway $17 bucks.

About battery life. I've not put it through it's paces yet, so it's hard to say. Either way, there's little else on the market for that price, that will power camera, monitor/light and something 5v at the same time.

I reckon I'll get 3-4 hours out of it, and that will be fine. I'm ordering two more, as they're really cheap, and fit well in the lanparte shoulder mount, with a cable tie, but am searching for a large jubilee clip. There's no indication to remaining charge which is a pain, but I'm happy to just charge all three before a shoot, and know I have enough.

@chrimsbroome Its quite easy to make a battery pack. You need some batteries, a connector, some wire, solder and some heat shrink tubing. All that stuff apart from the solder and the soldering iron can be had from battery space. Obviously you'll need some soldering skills too. The parts are pretty big so you don't need to be super precise but you need to be careful you don't overheat the batteries.

If you search on google for "diy RC car battery pack" or something similar you should get a bunch of hits.

As for capacity, unfortunately with 7 of those cells, you can only get 8.4v @ 10000mAh (connect in series) or 1.2v @ 70000mAh (connect in parallel). There's no free lunch here :p

@sumo, thanks for the info - It seems I would have ot construct a pack for myself. I not really experienced in this. I wonder if there is tutorial on how to make one. 1.2 volt x 7 cell = 8.4 volt = 70,000 if I am correct thats a WOW eee WOW WOW.

@itimjim - I'm interested in battery life on that as well.

I use these to power camera (9v), lilliput 5dii/o (12v) and and HDMI video sender (5v).

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-Black-5V-9V-12V-3-1-DC-Rechargeable-Li-ion-Battery-CCTV-CAM-Camera-ep-/150767676829?pt=UK_ConsumerElectronics_Batteries_SM&hash=item231a742d9d#ht_5159wt_922

@sumo Couldn't you just gimme the blue pill ! My dream was beautiful & felt so real... Me so stupido! Yeah, RC-Batt-Pack will do it ;)

I have some rechargeable 1,2v AA's at 3000 mAh per piece. Try to find - or built a box that fits 7 of these Bastardos... 21000mAh should do it! I'll post if it worked out for me.. (My power loader needs 4hrs to feed them up...)

Learn't something new recently which really tossed a spoon in the works. Both my two battery packs have lost their ability to charge or sustain a charge for my Panasonic GH2. I was a bit thrown by this because I thought it would last longer than the 6-8 months.

Well it turns out that no matter how well you treat these dry cells:

-Dischage them when your not using them -Keep them topped up on every shoot -basically Religously follow step in every anal way possible.

They will loose their ability to sustain their charge after a curtain period. The thing is the bigger the battery the more coils they have inside them and the more likely it will fail. The shop I bought these from had a 30 day warrenty on these batterys esp for the biggest one. There is a reason for that - its unstable the bigger the size.

6 months max on 5000mha battery is not bad if your a film studio and can afford too spend money. I think I will have to go lower in capacity if I wont to prolong the life of these batterys.

(What was really scary though was I did a firmware update and just as I had finised BANG - cannot use this battery in this camera. This was just after I fully charged it. Talk about almost killing my camera.

I just got my Dynamite DYN4062 Sentry LiPo today and there isn't much too it but it does the one thing that you need to know. The Voltage of the NiMH battery pack and in general how much is left before you get that "battery cannot be used in this camera message". As you know this because the voltage drops just below 8.4 volts. One thing though that I have sent a message to the seller is that you can only set tester at 7.4 volts and 9.6 volts, not 8.4 volts. The device works properly at 7.4 volts but at 9.6 volts the bar status wont work but the voltage will.


I have asked the seller since it says on the advertisement 3 volts to 20 volts battery, would a get misleading readings and therefor the wrong reading which would lead the battery to go flat out of the blue.