Anyone upgrade a DS-125 battery pack?

The diode is enclosed in heat shrink and is on the back of the plate as seen in the attached picture.

Bill Libecap

Neither of my packs had any kind of diode.

Paul C

The diode is enclosed in heat shrink and is on the back of the plate as seen in the attached picture.

Bill Libecap

here is wher the battery connects

I don't recall seeing that, but I'm not sure. I have another pack that I have yet to upgrade, so I'll open that one and take a look. I certainly did not need to make any additions to the pack in my upgrades.

Dave

Hey Dave

I have a question for you. Does your battery pack have a diode between the recharger plug and the battery pack? You can tell with a vom. the plug will not show any voltage when you measure it. the charger I purchased CHUN-0409ARC would not start charging the pack with the diode in place. I had to add a 1meg resistor across the diode.

 

Bill Libecap

If you have a Volt Ohm Meter, put it on a low resistance scale and check the outside of the power connector to the pin as I indicated in the drawing. Then reverse the leads. If one way is open and the other is resistance it's a diode.

Your charger works just fine then?

Bill

Ok - that has been added so that if you plug in a charger with the polarity swapped it won't break the pack.

Though as you have proved Bill the newer type sensing chargers will object - your 1M resistor in parallel is a fine idea, myself I would drop the value to maybe 20K or so.

Paul C

I had tested with my power supply and it needed 10m to work so I opted for a 1m as that gave me some wiggle room. I didn't see the need to drop to a lower value.

Bill

Ok - that has been added so that if you plug in a charger with the polarity swapped it won't break the pack.

 

Though as you have proved Bill the newer type sensing chargers will object - your 1M resistor in parallel is a fine idea, myself I would drop the value to maybe 20K or so.

 

Paul C

Am sure that the 1M works just fine for your charger Bill, even with 20k with a 'dumb' charger you will only reverse charge the pack some 350uA which would not be an issue.

Myself I would take the diode out (we are not going to charge it up the wrong way are we ?).

When I purchased my charger I got the model that charges up to six cells as the 8 cell model had a much longer charge cycle.

The pack here is six cells, chuck in a diode drop and it may or may not have worked for me.

With the current generation of intelligent chargers which are pretty much required with these new batteries the diode is redundant as the charger is bright enough not to attempt to charge a 'reversed' cell pack.

Paul C

Time to fix mine after a stupid flood... Wish me luck...

Here is a picture of the circuitboard inside the ds125 BP. Might come in handy if you have a broken connection and can't fix it without removing the other connections. Both text and lines to explain where everything will go. Hope it is useful for someone...

CORRECTION: The positive part of the plug is in the middle. Therefore the outside is negative.

PRC, Nice photos of the battery detail.

I thought I would report back on the rebuild of 2 packs.

Went with the 4500mAhr batteries from BJ. No problem with fitting pack into Ike battery compartment, or charging using Ikelite charger.

http://www.batteryjunction.com/red-subc4500-tab.html

To assist in locating the new battery pack, I took the old pack and traced on a piece of paper the location of the cells and then hot glued them together one at a time.

Took about an hour for the first pack rebuild and 15 minutes for the second.

I found I needed a high watt solder iron ( Weller D550 260watts). Trick is to apply lots of heat quickly. The battery act as heat sink and sucks heat away from the solder as you are trying to heat it up. Bad things can happen if too much heat transfers into the battery. I kept the batteries as cool as possible (swabbed with moist rag after heating).

The run time is amazing with these cells. At least 3+ dives (several hundred shots) with modeling light on full time

Mike

Does anyone happen to know what sort of cells Ikelite is using in their NiMH packs these days? I concur on the run time of the 4500mAhr BJ cells, simply amazing! I've done whole dive days with 300-500 flashes and the power level might drop on notch. It's a great upgrade, and saves a ton of cash if you don't buy the overpriced Ike charger.

PRC, Nice photos of the battery detail.

 

I thought I would report back on the rebuild of 2 packs.

 

Went with the 4500mAhr batteries from BJ. No problem with fitting pack into Ike battery compartment, or charging using Ikelite charger.

http://www.batteryjunction.com/red-subc4500-tab.html

 

To assist in locating the new battery pack, I took the old pack and traced on a piece of paper the location of the cells and then hot glued them together one at a time.

Took about an hour for the first pack rebuild and 15 minutes for the second.

 

I found I needed a high watt solder iron ( Weller D550 260watts). Trick is to apply lots of heat quickly. The battery act as heat sink and sucks heat away from the solder as you are trying to heat it up. Bad things can happen if too much heat transfers into the battery. I kept the batteries as cool as possible (swabbed with moist rag after heating).

 

The run time is amazing with these cells. At least 3+ dives (several hundred shots) with modeling light on full time

 

Mike

Does anyone happen to know what sort of cells Ikelite is using in their NiMH packs these days?

1.8 Ahr I think.

Does anyone happen to know what sort of cells Ikelite is using in their NiMH packs these days? I concur on the run time of the 4500mAhr BJ cells, simply amazing! I've done whole dive days with 300-500 flashes and the power level might drop on notch. It's a great upgrade, and saves a ton of cash if you don't buy the overpriced Ike charger.

Battery pack capacity

Could well be a 4,000mAh pack. I'm still looking for someone who has opened a recently made NiMH battery pack and who knows for sure.

I opened three strobes made -07. One had 3,3Ah. Two had 3Ah.

Thanks. It looks like Ikelite starts using higher-capacity batteries as these become available. My two battery packs, made in July and November 2008, appear to top out at ~4000mAh, based on my tests. In the absence of clear specifications from Ikelite, one can only assume the capacity of one's battery pack based on how long it takes to charge it using the Ikelite smart charger.

Is this the $28 charger you are using?

http://www.batteryjunction.com/rc900.html

No, it's this one:

http://www.batteryjunction.com/unsmch.html

Is this the $28 charger you are using?

 

http://www.batteryjunction.com/rc900.html

FWIW in Europe I have used this :-

http://uk.farnell.com/mascot/2115000040/ch...cell/dp/1283207

or I see no reason why this one would not also work ( fast charge / more expense )

http://uk.farnell.com/mascot/2215000084/ch...cell/dp/1283210

Paul C

Just a heads-up for anyone buying the Tenergy 4500's from batteryjunction suggested in this thread, that i just recieved some and they came with no tabs! The reply that i got from batteryjunction is that they no longer sell these batteries with tabs (even though they have "-tab" in the URL still."

Is it still safe to solder tabs onto flat top batteries? Anyone got any tips to do this?

Cheers,

Peter