Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
The discharge tests run at 250 mA, which is probably a bit low, as the HDR-AS30V camera can capture video for about two hours on a single battery. Given the Sony’s nominal 1.24 A·h (love that precision!) capacity and derating the Wasabi’s ambitious 1.6 A·h, two hours suggests a current around 500 mA would be more appropriate, but we’ll go with a lower current for now.
Oddly, the two Wasabi batteries (green & blue traces) outperform the Sony OEM battery (red and purple) in terms of voltage:
Sony NP-BX1 – OEM Wasabi – 2014-01-28
I can’t explain the small kink just before the big dropoff for both Wasabi batteries. Perhaps the protection circuitry behind the battery terminals has a slight peculiarity?
Looking at the total energy delivered, however:
Sony NP-BX1 – OEM Wasabi – Wh – 2014-01-28
The Sony battery says it’ll deliver 4.5 W·h and actually produces 4.8 W·h. The Wasabi batteries claim 5.7 W·h and don’t even come close at 4.25 W·h.
I cross-checked those results by importing the CSV data into a spreadsheet, computing the point-by-point power, finding the average, and then multiplying by the total test time in hours. Doing it a couple different ways says you can eyeball a reasonable value by multiplying the median voltage by the test current to get average wattage, then multiplying by the total test time to get W·h. That’s within a few percent, which is good enough for me.
The camera’s power supply undoubtedly has a low-voltage cutoff, but it’s a single-cell battery and they might just run it down around 2.8 V; in that case, the Sony batteries will last longer. If the voltage cutout is 3.5 V, similar to the Canon camera, then the Wasabi batteries win.
I don’t have enough experience with the camera or the batteries to predict anything based on actual use.
The avconv (formerly ffmpeg) image-to-video programs expect sequentially numbered files, with the numbers in a fixed-width part of the file name, thusly: dsc00001.jpg.
ll | head
total 286576
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ed ed 595708 Jan 23 19:14 dsc00940.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ed ed 515561 Jan 23 19:14 dsc00941.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ed ed 580190 Jan 23 19:14 dsc00942.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ed ed 571387 Jan 23 19:14 dsc00943.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ed ed 573207 Jan 23 19:14 dsc00944.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ed ed 571086 Jan 23 19:14 dsc00945.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ed ed 571600 Jan 23 19:14 dsc00946.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ed ed 571547 Jan 23 19:14 dsc00947.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ed ed 565706 Jan 23 19:15 dsc00948.jpg
A Bash one-liner loop does the renumbering:
sn=1 ; for f in *jpg ; do printf -v dn 'dsc%05d.jpg' "$(( sn++ ))" ; mv $f $dn ; done
The results look pretty much like you’d expect:
ll | head
total 286556
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ed ed 595708 Jan 23 19:14 dsc00001.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ed ed 515561 Jan 23 19:14 dsc00002.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ed ed 580190 Jan 23 19:14 dsc00003.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ed ed 571387 Jan 23 19:14 dsc00004.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ed ed 573207 Jan 23 19:14 dsc00005.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ed ed 571086 Jan 23 19:14 dsc00006.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ed ed 571600 Jan 23 19:14 dsc00007.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ed ed 571547 Jan 23 19:14 dsc00008.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ed ed 565706 Jan 23 19:15 dsc00009.jpg
Because you’re renaming the files anyway, don’t bother to normalize ’em:
sn=1 ; for f in *JPG ; do printf -v dn 'dsc%05d.jpg' "$(( sn++ ))" ; mv $f $dn ; done
And, of course, you can fetch ’em from the camera while doing that:
sn=1 ; for f in /mnt/part/DCIM/100MSDCF/*JPG ; do printf -v dn 'dsc%05d.jpg' "$(( sn++ ))" ; cp -a $f $dn ; done
That leaves the DSC*JPG original files on the camera, where you can delete all of them in one operation when you’re happy with the results.
If you don’t need the full resolution, reserialize and resize each picture on the fly:
sn=1 ; for f in /mnt/part/DCIM/100MSDCF/*JPG ; do printf -v dn 'dsc%05d.jpg' "$(( sn++ ))" ; convert $f -resize 50% $dn ; done
That’s based on combining several hints turned up by the usual Google search.
To assemble a quick-and-simple movie from the images:
avconv -r 30 -i dsc%05d.jpg -q 5 movie.mp4
The image quality certainly isn’t up to what you (well, I) would expect from a 1920×1080 “HD” file, but the Sony HDR-AS30V Zeiss camera lens seems to be a fisheye pinhole (170° view angle, 2.5 mm f/2.8) backed with relentless image compression:
Sony HDR-AS30V Action Camera
Memo to Self: It’s not worth creating and remembering Yet Another Script.
While converting a stop-action series of images from the HDR-AS30V into a movie, I wanted change all the image files on a USB Flash drive from DSC00008.JPG to dsc00008.jpg, so as to simplify typing their names.
Alas, because the camera’s exFAT filesystem cares not one whit about case, the obvious command doesn’t work:
rename 's/JPG/jpg/' /mnt/part/*
/mnt/part/DSC00008.JPG not renamed: /mnt/part/DSC00008.jpg already exists
The Sony HDR-AS30V “action camera” uses NP-BX1 lithium batteries (3.7 V @ 1.24 A·h = 4.6 W·h) that are, of course, a completely different size and shape than any other lithium battery on the planet.
So.
Tweaking a few dimensions in the Canon NB-6L source code, tinkering with the layout of the contact pins, and shazam Yet Another 3D Printed Battery Test Fixture:
NP-BX1 Holder – show layout
It builds nicely, although the contact pin tunnels are a bit too close to the top of the case:
Sony NP-BX1 Holder – on platform
After reaming out the contact pin holes to the proper diameters & depths, then gluing the plugs in place, it works just as you’d expect:
Sony NP-BX1 battery holder
It’s worth noting that the Wasabi charger accepts the batteries upside-down, with the conspicuous chevron against the charger body. It’s definitely not the way all the other chargers work. The keying recesses on the battery (corresponding to the blocks in the solid model) lie along the bottom edge of the contact surface, so flipping the battery over means they’ll hold it in place, but … oh, well.
That grotty Powerpole connector last saw use in some random benchtop lashup. At some point I’ll be forced to start making more of those.
Our Larval Engineer reported that her camera, which is my old Casio pocket camera, has begun fading away, so we’re getting her a shiny new camera of her very own. Being a doting father, I picked up a pair of Wasabi NB-6L batteries (and a charger, it not costing much more for the package) so she’s never without electrons, and did the usual rundown test on all three batteries:
Canon NB-6L – 2014 OEM vs Wasabi
Fairly obviously, the Wasabi batteries aren’t first tier products, but they’re definitely better than that bottom-dollar crap from eBay.
Used to be, back in the day, that when you got a box full of shiny new electronics, it bore stickers: “Do not accept if seal is broken” or “Factory sealed” or “Genuine product” or something like that. When you slit the seal, you had some confidence that the last person to look in the box sat at the end of their production line; I’ll grant you that counterfeit stickers have become cheap & readily available, but it’s the principle of the thing.
Nowadays, a shiny new Canon camera arrives in a box with a tab tucked into a slit:
Canon Camera box – unopened and unsealed
The box looked unopened and everything inside seemed in order, but … even though I’d seen this before on other cameras, it’s still disconcerting.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 