VoiceOfEmerika

My biggest disappointment with this project has been the limits on time and number of frames. Well, the newest version of the GR Digital has fixed one and I have fixed the other. The GR Digital 2 supports SDHC cards which can get up into 16 or 32 megabytes… maybe more. As you push one boundary another breaks. Now that I can have a zillion (an exaggeration) frames, my battery fails long before that happy number is reached.

My camera has an adapter so you can run it off AC. Although I can see doing some cool indoor stuff it’s not my main interest. It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that the AC adapter could be converted into a super sized battery pack.

The rechargeable batteries for the GR Digital are 3.7 volts. Three rechargeable AA batteries should be 3.6 volts. (If you read the specs. Though when measured they are 3.95 volts.) A quick trip to Frys and I picked up a couple of AA battery holders that fit three batteries. These had the 9 volt style connectors already on them, so I picked up a few of the other ends as well.

A little work with a soldering iron and I put together this:

The first test using just three batteries ran for five hours. That’s about three and a half hours more that I was ever able to get with the standard battery. I should be able to hook up six and get about ten hours. That’s about as much as I imagine I will need for now. I think I might be able to add and remove batteries with this arrangement, but I and not quite ready to test this yet.

Though this project worried me a little, it was made easier by my broken camera. Although it’s quite unusable, it does turn on and I was able to determine that my little monstrosity did not smoke it.