DIY USB POWERBANK battery for nikon d5200 ( stuck with error

[exp996]

we like to shoot video , lot of video , but as u know single nikon battery is not enough . and buying multiple battery is not a option for us right now .

as we have some usb power bank with us which are 10,000mah each which is 10x times of nikon battery . we though tit will be good idea to find someway to use external usb powerbank in camera .

1. first problem we had was nikon battery output power is 7.95v but usb powerbank output is 5v .

so to solve this problem we got 5v to 9v regulated stepup booster . and we adgusted the output power to 8v .

now we directly connected our 8v into the camera with wire to find out whether is will work or not .
and to our surprise camera turn on , but its show error message to use genuine nikon battery

2. second problem
error mesaage
- this battery cannot be used . choose battery use in this camera .

so we found out that we power camera directly with 8v , since nikon check wheather we are using nikon battery for not .

so to overcome this problem , we got one stupid idea .
we dissembled the only nikon battery we had .

then we conected our power point to the nikon battery circuit .
then we inserted our modded battery into the camera .

camera turn on .

but we got a new error message

- press shutter release button again .

shutter is perfectly fine . we dont know what the problem .

we are stuck here .

do you guys any solution to it .

*camera - nikon d5200
*battery - el14

[mitkonikov]

Hi, I have a couple of follow-up questions here..

1. How do you know that the shutter sounds perfectly fine when you can't take a picture with it, or can you?
2. What camera functionalities can you access with the modded battery?

What I think is the case, it that the camera isn't supplied with enough current from the booster you use. You have though about the voltage (although a little bit late), but you haven't though about the current which is important too.. I think you need at least 2A of current and the booster is not going to supply it. You should have used a 9V battery, regulated to 7V with a 2 or 3A regulator. We need more information, but my best guess is that the camera doesn't have enough current to make shutter actuation.

P.S: Using a booster in high current situations is an elementary electronic mistake (a lot of the time)...

[exp996]

hey there .

well happy to say my mod is now working perfectly fine now .

now to your first .
1. - i manually checked whether the shutter is stuck or not . it moving correctly so i assumed its right .
2. previously with the mod i can access setting . but i cant take photo video as its required shutter to work . but its working now .

***how i solved the problem .
i reassembled my battery as it as before and checked wheather camera was working or not .
-it was working .

so now , i took my 8v power and solder directly to the inbuilt battery terminal .

the inbuilt battery itself was output 7.8v , but with connecting it in parallel to my 8v it gave 8.1v power .

now then i placed battery into the camera , and it was working fine .

*****so now i had doubt wheather it working with my external usb power or not as camera inbuilt battery was still attached there .

so to find out whether my mod was working on not .
i kept my camera on recording .

idealy my camera record upto 1hour video at the most in full charge battery . so basically if it record more than 2hour than that means it working with usb power .

i recorded multiple video file because of 20min limit . in total of 2 hour or so .
my boost converter was bit warm . and also my powerbank was less by one point . and still camera was showing full charge .

so now i was pretty much sure that it was working on my usb power

[mitkonikov]

Oh, great!

(and few moments after ) I was right...
Your booster can't supply enough amperage (juice) to the camera to make a shutter actuation. But putting the battery in parallel (even though I still don't know how your exact schematic looks) gave the camera enough amperage each time the shutter actuated. My only worries now, are that the battery is going to discharge after some amount of shutter actuations (I haven't still looked up how the battery is charged and discharged from the camera) but I'm not sure... For video, it's going to be just fine...

Although putting two power supplies in parallel can help with the amperage supply, in the electronic world it is never recommended. There are problems that can occur and there are workarounds too... But in your case, if they are working normally together, than that's totally fine.

Experiment more with it, see how it handles and if there's anything else, post it...

- Mitko

[kirillsam]