The power supply converting the battery’s raw 6 V into whatever voltage is required by my troublesome SJCAM M50 trail camera failed, despite the replaced wire between the battery and the camera remaining intact. The camera continued to work with 5 V power supplied through its USB-C jack, so I think it can accomplish most of its goals with a USB battery pack nearby.
Unfortunately, the USB-C jack isn’t accessible with the case closed, so I decided to repurpose the battery compartment’s external 6 V input jack.
I removed the 000 (0 Ω) SMD “resistor” connecting the battery + terminal to the power supply circuitry and soldered one end of a wire to that pad:
The adjacent 000 “resistor” connects the battery - input terminal to the circuit, so it remains in place.
The other end of the wire goes to the high side of the +5 V filter caps for the USB-C input:
The battery pack produced 6 V from two parallel-ish banks of four AA cells or an external source arriving through a 3.5 / 1.35 mm coaxial power plug, with a Schottky diode dropping 250 mV before reaching the BAT connector in the first picture. The camera seems happy to run from slightly under 5 V.
Unfortunately, “happy to run” means the camera remains in Setup mode, ready to dump its stored images through the USB port, and won’t take pictures regardless of the switch normally controlling such things. It seems I must either troubleshoot the switching regulator generating the internal power supply voltage(s)or junk the camera.
I’m not red-hot pleased with the several SJCAM cameras I’ve used, as they seem to feature under-designed durability for their intended use. The fact that SJCAM cameras seem to be on the better side of a bad lot is not comforting.
I did the probing & doodling during a Squidwrench remote meeting and was assured I would not regret directly applying five volts to the circuit, said with the intonation of this meme:
Nah, I’ve never done anything like that …
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 