{"id":660,"date":"2010-06-09T16:17:07","date_gmt":"2010-06-09T23:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/?p=660"},"modified":"2022-10-06T08:37:16","modified_gmt":"2022-10-06T12:37:16","slug":"please-dont-melt-my-face","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/please-dont-melt-my-face\/","title":{"rendered":"Please don’t melt my face…"},"content":{"rendered":"

…ah, dodgy Li-ion batteries, strapped to my head… what could go wrong<\/a>?<\/p>\n

I wanted to get another battery for my ContourHD helmetcam… but for such a small battery they aren’t cheap<\/a>! So I dug around the VholdR forums and Ebay… and found that I could get 2 aftermarket batteries shipped to my door for less than the price of a single OEM (even before tax+shipping!). So I send $28.53 US to Lion Battery<\/a> and a week later they arrived in a small padded envelope.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t \t\n \"contourhd_batteries_1\"\n\n \t<\/a>\n\t\t <\/div>\n <\/center> <\/p>\n

The packaging said they were made in China by Cameron Sino<\/a>. Some of the OEM battery ads made a point of saying that some aftermarket batteries had a poor fit… but at first glance the Cameron Sino copies appeared to be the same size (aftermarket on left, OEM on right):<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t \t\n \"contourhd_batteries_2\"\n\n \t<\/a>\n\t\t <\/div>\n <\/center> <\/p>\n

…but when you put them in the camera you can see that they’re a bit thinner: if you wrapped a piece of paper around them (or a thicker sticker) they would be a perfect fit (aftermarket on top, OEM on bottom)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t \t\n \"contourhd_batteries_3\"\n\n \t<\/a>\n\t\t <\/div>\n <\/center> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t \t\n \"contourhd_batteries_4\"\n\n \t<\/a>\n\t\t <\/div>\n <\/center> <\/p>\n

I charged and discharged all of my batteries a few times and recorded run times (2 used OEM, 2 new aftermarket). It was easy enough to do: just turn on the camera… come back when it’s dead… and then look at the length of the video files it recorded. The averaged results:<\/p>\n

OEM runtime: 2h38min<\/strong>
\nAftermarket runtime: 1h50min<\/strong><\/p>\n

…in other words the Cameron Sino batteries only had about 70% of the capacity of the OEMs… though the advertising\/packaging claims the same 1050mAh capacity of the originals. This wasn’t a huge surprise: I’m well aware of what I’m getting when I buy cheap batteries from Ebay<\/a>. In this case it turned out to be a deal. Why? If I ordered 2 batteries from the site I linked above (that says they’re on sale) it costs $65.98 for the batteries, $3.30 for tax, and $5.70 for the cheapest shipping (= $74.98). The 28.53US I paid is $30.06 Canadian… 40% of the OEM price.<\/p>\n

So, 70% of the runtime, for 40% of the price<\/strong>. And they still last over 1h45m before I have to swap them out. That’s a deal<\/em>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…ah, dodgy Li-ion batteries, strapped to my head… what could go wrong? I wanted to get another battery for my ContourHD helmetcam… but for such a small battery they aren’t cheap! So I dug around the VholdR forums and Ebay… Continue reading Please don’t melt my face…<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ptY4v-aE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2981,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660\/revisions\/2981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}