Topic: jb3 external power II...

[F.O.Bean]

just ran 4 days @ OSMF w/o recharging. Taped
Coopers Uncle
New Monsoon
Railroad Earth
Austin Loung Lizards
Bela Fleck Trio
Sarah Jaroz
two high string band
plus 4gigs (dunno time duration on 16/44.1) of campsite jam sessions

Gear was left powered on w/o recoding during setbreaks.

4x 3200 Mah 7.2v nimh > custom LDO/boost regulator box(9v, 6v & 5v) > JB3 & modSBM1. 9v was not used but is always on.

[keanu]whoa[/keanu]

almost 13AH capacity!!

marc

thats nothing marc, i will have at least 6x 3300mah NIMH batts for the festies this summer ;Dso thats about 25mah battery power, plus the 6v's i'll have strictly for my v3

why not ditch the 6v entirely. The V3 has such a flexible operating range.

just ran 4 days @ OSMF w/o recharging. Taped
Coopers Uncle
New Monsoon
Railroad Earth
Austin Loung Lizards
Bela Fleck Trio
Sarah Jaroz
two high string band
plus 4gigs (dunno time duration on 16/44.1) of campsite jam sessions

Gear was left powered on w/o recoding during setbreaks.

4x 3200 Mah 7.2v nimh > custom LDO/boost regulator box(9v, 6v & 5v) > JB3 & modSBM1. 9v was not used but is always on.

[keanu]whoa[/keanu]

almost 13AH capacity!!

marc

thats nothing marc, i will have at least 6x 3300mah NIMH batts for the festies this summer ;Dso thats about 25mah battery power, plus the 6v's i'll have strictly for my v3

why not ditch the 6v entirely. The V3 has such a flexible operating range.

to be quite honest i prolly will, they power thev3 for soo long tho, each 6v 7.2amp ecocharge i have goes for about 9 solid hours w/ the v3(phantom on/a-dcon/coax and optical outs) and also it helps mybag sit upright

[fozzy]

I have a ? about splitting the 5v feed from a Walmart adapter box.

Could one simply Snip the End of the cable that has the adapter plug end on it and wire in another plug to make it feed (2) 5v feeds at the same time . (Simply a "Y" connector if ya will)

Would sniping this cause it to drop the amperage or the voltage , or Both.

TIA
Nick

It would not effect the voltage but you will be drawing twice the amount of amperage.  Depending on the rating of the voltage regulator it may work.  I know when i had a RS car charger the OVER light would come on when writing to the HD and charging the internals.  This will also generate more heat but not necessarily too much.

[Aaron734]

hey everyone,

i have a couple of things going on and im looking for some input on, i have read most of this thread as its been developing, but i must have missed something..

ok, im using a rat-shack hacked car adapter to power my jb3. the power is coming from a walmart battery. ive had it freeze up on me a couple of times. (if anyone wants to see a picture of the adapter im using, let me know, its not a problem at all, its a little bit different than the ones that ive seen in this thread, and it was super easy to make)

i gather that you are not supposed to plug this thing in until you are actually recording, due to the jb3 drawing no more than 1 amp during the actually recording process.

the first time it froze up, i took the jb3 battery (i only have one) out of the recorder during the recording, it lasted about 17 minutes before it froze.)

the next time it froze up, i was using a battery that was not charged all the way, so when i plugged in the external power, it started charging the battery, it froze up after about 45 minutes that time.

the next time i used the external setup, i had a fully charged jb3 battery in my jb3 and the external power worked fine. (it ran for over three hours straight!

so, as of now my conclusion is that in order for this setup to work, i need to plug in the external power right after it prepares the recording, and there must be a fully charged jb3 battery in the recorder. is this correct? am i missing something?

im running a test right now and im at 50 minutes and still recording  . (with a fully charged jb3 battery in it)

i thought i read somewhere about a way to boost the the walmart batt from one amp to two amps, can anyone shed some light on this for me? is this really necessary?

thanks in advance!

[F.O.Bean]

you have to let the jb3 'take its time' when powering up/down. thats mainly been the cause of my freeze ups, just make sure you have a paperclip handy to reset the jb3 if it freezes up on ya!

[Aaron734]

you have to let the jb3 'take its time' when powering up/down. thats mainly been the cause of my freeze ups, just make sure you have a paperclip handy to reset the jb3 if it freezes up on ya!

it worked again tonight, i gave it around 25 seconds till i plugged it in, and had no problems! +t bean, does the same thing happen with the vr box?

[F.O.Bean]

so far, the jb3 w/ the VR Box has been smoooth as silk, no freeze ups as of yet

its like any computer tho, dont try and rush it or it will freeze up

[Aaron734]

so far, the jb3 w/ the VR Box has been smoooth as silk, no freeze ups as of yet

its like any computer tho, dont try and rush it or it will freeze up

gotcha, do you think that the battery not being fully charged had anything to do with it? (does it pull more amps when its charging?)

[fozzy]

so far, the jb3 w/ the VR Box has been smoooth as silk, no freeze ups as of yet

its like any computer tho, dont try and rush it or it will freeze up

gotcha, do you think that the battery not being fully charged had anything to do with it? (does it pull more amps when its charging?)

the jb3 definately pulls more amps when charging, i would say around double. 

[F.O.Bean]

so far, the jb3 w/ the VR Box has been smoooth as silk, no freeze ups as of yet

its like any computer tho, dont try and rush it or it will freeze up

gotcha, do you think that the battery not being fully charged had anything to do with it? (does it pull more amps when its charging?)

the jb3 definately pulls more amps when charging, i would say around double.

but i doubt a half full battery may make that happen, but i have no clue.

maybe try and re-create the event at home

[momule]

he did state he was running a Rat shack adaptor and not the Sima or Initial (wally world version)
it may not be able to keep up with having to charge the battery at the same time.

do we know what "MA" it puts out?

[sethro]

Hey leegeddy, I've got a question about your Bumblebee VR-JBOX.  Can the circut regulate down somewhere between 3.2v and 4.1v?  I've converted and internal jb3 battery to accept external power.  I made a 3v battery and it works great, the problem is recharging it.  As I have a ua-5 on the way a vr-box seems more useful than trying to make a single "altoids tin" circut to regulate the battery.

How's this working out?  I considered something similar, was going to hack the 3.6V Li-ion battery and add a big external pack of batteries so that the internal battery circuitry was still in the loop.  Those 4 connectors actually do go somewhere, it's not just + and -. 

What happens when you feed it 3.6 V battery power to those 2 terminals?  Does the battery gauge on the display still work properly?  Does the JB3 shut down safely when the battery finally does die?

I ended up just feeding the 5V input on the JB3 with a 7805 chip from RadioShack because I use 12V for my preamp anyway.  It was like $1, soldered wires to the 3 pins on the chip, screwed it to a hunk of aluminum and it works fine.  Just pull the battery out and plug in the external power and it works as normal.

The modified JB3 battery plug is working great.  I've done two so far.  The first was with a dead battery (nothing to loose) and the second was a good battery (it took two tries to get it right).  The white battery cases are now filled with silicon with wires coming out the back.  I re-wired the good Li-ion cell to connect to the "plug".  The JB3 seems not to notice the change.  The battery meter works.  I ran several tests recording until the battery died.  The JB3 always shutdown and saved data...until the other night.  The first bump I've run into was at the Cosmic American Ensemble where I lost the second set.  I hadn't run anything in awhile and I am not positive what casused the problem. 

With the battery case open I poked around with a volt meter until I determined what I thought was going on.  I'm wishing I had written the steps down now, I think there is one port that is positive and 2-3 that complete the circut.  There are only two leads inside the case, one going to each end of the li-ion cell.  I marked where they were, cut the leads and re-connected them to wires going out the back of the case ening in the female side of a plug.  I put the male side on a 3.6v ni-mh pack I had made.  When I put it together, nothing happened.  (this was the first attempt)  Then I opened up the second battery to make sure I had the positive and negative correct.  I thought maybe the bad battery mislead me.  But no, checking the good battery lead me to the same conclusions about the positive and negative leads.  So, then I crossed the wires, positve case - negative ni-mh, negative case - positive ni-mh.  It worked, I have no idea why. 

The charge coming off a fully charged li-ion battery is ~4.2v as well as the ni-mh pack.  I think this would be a good voltage to send in  via a VR Jbox or simular circut.  One other thing is that the plug must be attached to a power source before it is inserted into the JB3.  My guess is that when the plug ,minus power, is read like a dead battery and the unit locks up even if power is connected.  A plus for this mod is the solid connection.  The wires could be connected with locking RC type connectors, XLR, what ever.

[fozzy]

+t sethro, very nice.  i would consider doing something similar if i was going to have the jb3 much longer.  lookout for a similar 722 mod.

[mattb]

Yeah that IS sweet. I've also considered this but never got past consideration.
I was thinking it would be cool to just put an extra jack on the JB3 that ties into where the batteries connect internally. That way I'd have the origianl power jack to charge the internal batteries or the new one to connect an external battery. Not sure if I'll ever get around to that one, and your idea may be better because it can just be added to any JB3 without modifying it.
+T for the cool innovation!

[Aaron734]

thanks for the help fellas, i think that my problem is solved  , and it didnt even cost me more money  . +ts

[tms]

Ok, that makes good sense, you didn't eliminate that little circuit board in there.  All four contacts with the JB3 are still intact, you simply changed to a different 3.6v NiMH battery.  I like that a lot. 

Don't sweat the lost Cosmic American Ensemble set, it wasn't the battery's fault.  I was running a stock JB3 battery Friday night and it died without saving the recording about 1 minute before the end of the show! D'oh!  And I watched it happening!  I wanted to see what would happen, just assumed it would save and then shut down, but it didn't. 

So I can understand what would happen if you put in a battery of approximately the same capacity.  What about a battery of much greater capacity?   Would the JB3 still be able to charge it you think?  Or would it draw so much amperage that the circuit would fry?  I wonder....  I bet it would be fine because it's probably current limited charging, so it would just take a lot longer to charge it.

Or maybe don't even bother charging with a JB3, use a stand alone battery charger instead.

Very cool, nice work.

Todd in Buffalo

The modified JB3 battery plug is working great.  I've done two so far.  The first was with a dead battery (nothing to loose) and the second was a good battery (it took two tries to get it right).  The white battery cases are now filled with silicon with wires coming out the back.  I re-wired the good Li-ion cell to connect to the "plug".  The JB3 seems not to notice the change.  The battery meter works.  I ran several tests recording until the battery died.  The JB3 always shutdown and saved data...until the other night.  The first bump I've run into was at the Cosmic American Ensemble where I lost the second set.  I hadn't run anything in awhile and I am not positive what casused the problem. 

With the battery case open I poked around with a volt meter until I determined what I thought was going on.  I'm wishing I had written the steps down now, I think there is one port that is positive and 2-3 that complete the circut.  There are only two leads inside the case, one going to each end of the li-ion cell.  I marked where they were, cut the leads and re-connected them to wires going out the back of the case ening in the female side of a plug.  I put the male side on a 3.6v ni-mh pack I had made.  When I put it together, nothing happened.  (this was the first attempt)  Then I opened up the second battery to make sure I had the positive and negative correct.  I thought maybe the bad battery mislead me.  But no, checking the good battery lead me to the same conclusions about the positive and negative leads.  So, then I crossed the wires, positve case - negative ni-mh, negative case - positive ni-mh.  It worked, I have no idea why. 

The charge coming off a fully charged li-ion battery is ~4.2v as well as the ni-mh pack.  I think this would be a good voltage to send in  via a VR Jbox or simular circut.  One other thing is that the plug must be attached to a power source before it is inserted into the JB3.  My guess is that when the plug ,minus power, is read like a dead battery and the unit locks up even if power is connected.  A plus for this mod is the solid connection.  The wires could be connected with locking RC type connectors, XLR, what ever.