I've received a PD power bank that looks like it could work (Anker Nano Power Bank 22.5W), and the camera should arrive in the next couple of days.

To test the fit, I'll need to remove the optical cables from the A1 housing, but I'm not sure how theses work.

Do I just need to unscrew the two nuts, and then the cables can be removed without any risk to the housing?
Thanks

Edited June 5Jun 5 by bghazzal

11 minutes ago, bghazzal said:

Do I just need to unscrew the two nuts, and then the cables can be removed without any risk to the housing?
Thanks

Dont unscrew the nuts. They are part of the housing construction and holds the fiber connectors outside the housing and have o-rings in the construction.

You need to just pull the led's (unless they are glued or something) out. Mine (trt) are just pushed in, not sure about other brands.

Here is mine without led's:

Edited June 5Jun 5 by Sokrates

5 minutes ago, Sokrates said:

Dont unscrew the nuts. They are part of the housing construction and holds the fiber connectors outside the housing and have o-rings in the construction.

You need to just pull the led's (unless they are glued or something) out.

Here is mine without led's:

blob:https://imgur.com/76427353-7e9c-4e91-86f9-3cb6dfe6cfcc

You should also probably remove the trigger as well - is it an UWT trigger or some other type? What are the cables attached to?

5 minutes ago, Chris Ross said:

You should also probably remove the trigger as well - is it an UWT trigger or some other type? What are the cables attached to?

bghazzal's pictures on previous page show the cable is just hanging, with a connector in the end so i'm sure its like my trt one, trigger in the camera hot shoe and connect it to the cables when sliding in.

1 hour ago, Sokrates said:

bghazzal's pictures on previous page show the cable is just hanging, with a connector in the end so i'm sure its like my trt one, trigger in the camera hot shoe and connect it to the cables when sliding in.

expect you're right, I couldn't see the connector which is why I mentioned it.

Thank you both - yes, that was easier than I thought 😃 I just pulled on the cables and the fiber optic cables slid out

The power bank fits - now I need to test it with the camera to see it it works.
If it does it will just be a question of routing a flat USB cable.

The powerbank I got is this one:
https://www.anker.com/products/a1653-usb-c-portable-charger-5000mah?variant=42733234258070

Capacity: 5,000mAh

USB-C Output: 5V⎓3A / 9V⎓2.22A / 10V⎓2.25A

Total Output: 18W Max

It has a dual output, male on the length (which I plan on using) and female on the side.

I ordered a Ribbon Flat USB-C Data Cable 3A 10Gbps female to male and male to male, we'll see.

Edited June 5Jun 5 by bghazzal

As a follow-up, I can confirm the Anker Nano above powers the A7SIII. Handshake works and it charges the battery when idle. I haven't tried filming in 4K 120fps yet but don't there's no reason it shouldn't work to extend in-cameri battery life.
Now i need to find a good ribbon cable for a housing setup.

Edited June 6Jun 6 by bghazzal

As an update, my camera tray finally arrived today and I got the camera in the housing for the first time.

I can confirm it works - the Anker powebank fits in the housing and powers/charges the camera - the only thing I will need to look out for is cable routing, to make sure they don't get in the way of any gear operation.
I used an 20cm aliexpress 10Gbps ribbon cable for the powerbank. It fits with HDMI cable plugged in (I used a Nauticam HDMI cable rather than my Weefine screen's, as the Nauticam cable is shorter and faces the right way for my camera's HDMI port)





Here is the A7SIII in its NA-A1 housing, with the Anker battery pack connected and a Weefine WED-5 Pro screen connected, currently vaccum testing the whole thing (I have the 28-60 in a 100mm port, hence the nasty vignetting - I'll set up the 100mm later today)






Depending on camera battery / use, the powerbank charges the battery or, when it gets low, extends battery life. Camera battery was at 65% and it's now up to 78%

cheers

Edited June 27Jun 27 by bghazzal

As an update, the Anker power bank solution has an Achilles' heel: auto power-off. When a device is off or drawing very little current, the power bank turns off and needs to be restarted by pressing a button.

Other than turning it on before diving (= opening the housing) or leaving the camera on all the time, even when transiting to the dive site (= defeating the purpose of extending battery life), I don't see a practical solution.

10 hours ago, bghazzal said:

As an update, the Anker power bank solution has an Achilles' heel: auto power-off. When a device is off or drawing very little current, the power bank turns off and needs to be restarted by pressing a button.

Other than turning it on before diving (= opening the housing) or leaving the camera on all the time, even when transiting to the dive site (= defeating the purpose of extending battery life), I don't see a practical solution.

Apparently Anker power banks have a trickle charge mode designed to keep low power devices active, you could try to see if you can activate it on yours perhaps though it says it only last two hours. Most applications for always on power banks seem to be to run low power devices which use less power than the bank cut off level.

There are keep alive modules available but they only seem to work with lower power devices and not compatible with PD. It might be possible to plug one into a power bank and draw your PD current through a separate port?

7 minutes ago, Chris Ross said:

There are keep alive modules available but they only seem to work with lower power devices and not compatible with PD. It might be possible to plug one into a power bank and draw your PD current through a separate port?

Unfortunately all those devices (using the 555 timer) work only if the powered device is on. So, in this case if you shut down the camera the keep alive device doesn't send the pulse.

As tou wrote he could connect the keep alive on another port but it need a minimum resistance load as a small led or a resistor.

Edit:

Another test to be done is using the camera sleep functionality instead of powering it off. """Maybe"""" the small amount of current drawn is enough to keep the power bank awake.

Edited July 3Jul 3 by Davide DB

13 hours ago, Chris Ross said:

Apparently Anker power banks have a trickle charge mode designed to keep low power devices active, you could try to see if you can activate it on yours perhaps though it says it only last two hours. Most applications for always on power banks seem to be to run low power devices which use less power than the bank cut off level.

There are keep alive modules available but they only seem to work with lower power devices and not compatible with PD. It might be possible to plug one into a power bank and draw your PD current through a separate port?

13 hours ago, Davide DB said:

Unfortunately all those devices (using the 555 timer) work only if the powered device is on. So, in this case if you shut down the camera the keep alive device doesn't send the pulse.

As tou wrote he could connect the keep alive on another port but it need a minimum resistance load as a small led or a resistor.

Edit:

Another test to be done is using the camera sleep functionality instead of powering it off. """Maybe"""" the small amount of current drawn is enough to keep the power bank awake.

The one I use doesn't have a trickle down mode unfortunately, and it's the only one which fits in the housing.
I ran a test this morning, plugging in the powerbank and turning on the camera but not using it.
Powerbank stayed on for about 20 minutes charging the camera (which went into sleep mode) before shutting down.
I first saw the battery LEDs were off but the camera charging LED was still on - and when I activated the camera it was still charging.

However I came back 15 minutes later and the this time the camera charging LED was off, and the camera was running on normal camera battery, powerbank completely off. I didn't check levels but I'm guessing battery level had reached 100%, so nothing was happening and the powerbank shut off completely.

I ran other tests, basically camera on or off it's impossible to get past the 15 minute mark.

It will work fine while diving, it's just that I like to pull the vaccum early before diving, so this limits the application quite a bit.

I'm really curious about the keep alive devices and might try one.

Ideally I would need a battery pack which only turns on as the camera is turned on and pulling energy, just not sure how practical this is.

Edited July 4Jul 4 by bghazzal

51 minutes ago, bghazzal said:

I'm really curious about the keep alive devices and might try one.

Ideally I would need a battery pack which only turns on as the camera is turned on and pulling energy, just not sure how practical this is.

They might work but they need an additional load on top of the onboard pulse load. If you get one consider the adjustable load one. I think the PD spec is what is killing this, any low power stay on option assumes you only want to draw a little power.

If the camera can last one full dive on a fresh battery the path of least resistance might to plug it into a big power bank PD rated via USB bulkhead. Of course this will compete with using an external monitor and vacuum system unless you can find one of the offset vacuum valves which allow vacuum and bulkhead on one M16 hole. Crazy price of $US590 to manufacture one on demand.

Thanks - an external battery is not an option unfortunately.

On a positive note, I think the problem is partially solved. Looking into my camera settings, I had Auto Power Off set to 5 minutes (which could explain the Anker power bank's 5-minute cut-off time). I set it to 30 minutes and tested it.

The camera battery was at 75%, but the power bank has now been active for over 90 minutes and shows no sign of turning off. The screen is off, so I don't know if the battery has charged to 100%, but I see the power bank's LED indicators draining, so I imagine the camera is being powered by the power bank.

Exciting, as 1.5 hours is perfectly fine, even though it does mean leaving the camera on in the housing.

The ideal situation would be for the power bank to turn on when the camera is turned on, but I don't think that's possible.

First test in water today on the A7SIII with the Anker Nano powerbank - I opened the housing and turned on the powerbank 20 minutes before the dive.
The first dive was 120 minutes, and the powerbank powered the camera for 90 minutes, after which it turned off (empty?) and the battery went to camera battery mode. I had 80% camera battery power left at the end of the dive.
Now turning off the camera when not in use, I went for a second dive, 110 minutes, and camera battery was at 38% at the end of the second dive.

This gives me an estimated runtime of 225 minutes for a new Sony NP-FZ100 battery, to which the Anker powerbank adds roughly 90 minutes, so a total of roughly 315 minutes (5 hours 15 minutes), being conservative (turning off the camera) when on the camera battery.
I was shooting 4K video, 60fps to 120fps

I wonder if you could rig some sort of non contact switch like a magnetic reed switch? I've considered that for the vacuum alarm so I can keep it sealed without killing batteries

3 hours ago, Grantmac said:

I wonder if you could rig some sort of non contact switch like a magnetic reed switch? I've considered that for the vacuum alarm so I can keep it sealed without killing batteries

Yes - not sure how feasible it would be given space limitations. The power bank battery has a round, body-integrated push button on the opposite side:


I'm also very interested in this here: https://thepihut.com/products/power-bank-keepalive-usb-c
Instructions do say that it shouldn't be used with PD powerbanks, but not sure what the risks are with the Anker Nano's power delivery.
This is beyond my limited understanding of electronics unfortunately.



On of the other advantages of the systems is that I can just switch powerbanks - it's much easier to remove the powerbank than to remove the camera to access batteries, especially with a 100mm lens with focus gear.

Wondering if this item might be a good solution for extra power in a housing:

https://www.rubbermonkey.com.au/SmallRig-3168B-NP-F-Battery-Adapter-Mount-Plate-Advanced-Edition

It takes NP-F batteries widely used for video cameras and outputs up to 36W through the USB-C port. One of the smaller NP-F batteries like a 2000 - 3000 mAhr I think would fit in the bulge area above the hotshoe on many housings and would be a lot more future proof than any type of powerbank as the powerbanks appear and disappear regularly, while replacement NP-F batteries are widely available. This is an example of an NP-F battery:

https://www.rubbermonkey.com.au/Jupio-NP-F550-Lithium-Ion-Battery-Pack-7-2V-2350mAh?fromCategoryId=271

It would be the ideal battery for a housing manufacturer to provide an extended battery life option I think.

1 hour ago, Chris Ross said:

Wondering if this item might be a good solution for extra power in a housing:

https://www.rubbermonkey.com.au/SmallRig-3168B-NP-F-Battery-Adapter-Mount-Plate-Advanced-Edition

It takes NP-F batteries widely used for video cameras and outputs up to 36W through the USB-C port. One of the smaller NP-F batteries like a 2000 - 3000 mAhr I think would fit in the bulge area above the hotshoe on many housings and would be a lot more future proof than any type of powerbank as the powerbanks appear and disappear regularly, while replacement NP-F batteries are widely available. This is an example of an NP-F battery:

https://www.rubbermonkey.com.au/Jupio-NP-F550-Lithium-Ion-Battery-Pack-7-2V-2350mAh?fromCategoryId=271

It would be the ideal battery for a housing manufacturer to provide an extended battery life option I think.

Very interesting product, thanks Chris.
The mount plate is too large for my NA-A1 housing (max length is 77mm i order to close the housing), but this is a brilliant idea.

The Anker Nano is build around a 21700 cell, but I'm looking into custom-made dual 18650 battery packs now, for a non-autoshutoff solution.
If anyone is interested in using the space above the hotshoe in the Nauticam A1 housing, main size restriction is a 77mm length, 40mm width and a roughly 25mm height.

Edited August 16Aug 16 by bghazzal

1 hour ago, bghazzal said:

Very interesting product, thanks Chris.
The mount plate is too large for my NA-A1 housing (max length is 77mm i order to close the housing), but this is a brilliant idea.

The Anker Nano is build around a 21700 cell, but I'm looking into custom-made dual 18650 battery packs now, for a non-autoshutoff solution.
If anyone is interested in using the space above the hotshoe in the Nauticam A1 housing, main size restriction is a 77mm length, 40mm width and a roughly 25mm height.

Thought it might possibly be a little long, the batteries though could probably be adapted as they are about 68mm long and the termination with pins could make attaching a cord to them somewhat easier than a battery pack?

Several battery solutions that are not DIY from Marelux.

Marelux first offered MiniBat 1500 for $128.00 While they came up with a better design not offered by anyone else. MiniBatt 1200 is a 1200 mAh battery pack designed to fit inside the housing under the tray and is 6X4X2cm and 61.5g. This is much like the design of others with a mini USB-C charge and camera connection. OK for multi brands where it will fit.

Marelux then redesigned many of their new housings for use with FlashFuel 2100.

The patented design serves two functions, first as a manual flash trigger and also as an additional power scorch for the camera. FF2100 has a 2100 mAh battery to power the camera via USB-C and a second CR123 lithium battery with a capacity of 1000 to 1200 mAh depending on the battery to power the manual flash trigger.

Because the Marelux Apollo strobes in MTL mode can fire at up to twenty frames per second a power source was needed that could keep up with the flash. The original MX manual flash triggers with two CR2032 achieved around 100,000 to 140,000 flashed depending on the batteries being used and the FF2100 should achieve around three times that amount. FF2100 retails for $348.00 and because it is manual it works between all camera brands Marelux supports.

Marelux also makes a TTL flash trigger that fits into the same housings listed below if you don't need the additional battery power. It has a manual or TTL mode switch, USB-C charging with realtime battery level indicator and retails for $348.00 in Sony, Canon, Nikon and Panasonic models.

For video monitor users Marelux will soon introduce the Neptune RMT5 a 3000nit five inch LCD monitor which also adds to the battery supply. In addition to working as a video monitor it also provides a massive 6000 to 10,000 mAh of power. The RMT5 battery compartment can use 21700 or 18650 batteries (with the included adapters).

The monitor also has a remote trigger port which allows it to be remotely triggered from 1 to 2 meters away using a waterproof cable.

Vacuum-Safe, Zero-Leak Cable Engineering all three custom cables for the Neptune RMT5—HDMI, Power Supply, and Remote Trigger—are engineered with a specialized internal air-block barrier. Both the electrical wires and the connector assemblies are completely sealed internally. This prevents internal air migration, ensuring your housing maintains a perfect vacuum seal throughout the entire dive. RMT5 will retail for $1499.00.

Compatible housing models: MX-R5II, MX-R6III, MX-A7V, MX-A1II, MX-A7CII, MX-A6700, MX-Z8, MX-Z6III, MX-GH6/7, MX-S1RII and the new MX-A7RVI. With more designed for new cameras going forward.

4 hours ago, Phil Rudin said:

For video monitor users Marelux will soon introduce the Neptune RMT5 a 3000nit five inch LCD monitor which also adds to the battery supply. In addition to working as a video monitor it also provides a massive 6000 to 10,000 mAh of power. The RMT5 battery compartment can use 21700 or 18650 batteries (with the included adapters).

Combining a monitor and an external battery pack is an absolutely brillant idea.
Both HDMI cables and USB power delivery supply will be routed through the same bulkhead?

On battery packs, does Marelux currently have one which fits the following dimensions?
77 × 37 × 25 mm (L × W × H)
The 77mm length measurement is the most restrictive. It would be to charge an A7SIII battery while it drains, PD not required.


I currently use an Anker Nano powerbank which fits fine and is built around a single 21700 cell and works fine EXCEPT for it's PCB's 3 minutes auto shut-off features, which forces me to open the housing just before diving to turn it on.
The camera can't be off for more than 3 minutes or else the battery back shuts down and needs to be turned back on by pressing a button, a feature which can't be disabled.

I see the new MiniBatt MB1500 is only 1500 mAh, which is quite small for my application. For comparison, the Anker Nano, which is acceptable for the purpose, is 5,000 mAh - I'm currently looking into solutions based around 2x 18650 cells, rather than a single 21700.

Is there a higher-capacity battery pack planned or available with similar dimensions and functionality?

Thanks!

Edited September 28Sep 28 by bghazzal

The Mini is 60 x 40 x 20mm.

The FlashFuel 2100 is the current solution for stills and the RMT5 with be the video solution for now. As you have stated Marelux has many "brilliant" design ideas and I can only say stay tuned and we will all see what comes next.

My understanding is one cable bundle.

Edited September 28Sep 28 by Phil Rudin