Thanks guys, more good stuff to think on. The reinforcing ribs make sense Simon. Hmmm...
Well today I decided to start another little project. Not sure where it will end up but here's the guts.
The GoPro Hero 5 Session that I've been using for a dash cam for a couple of years has finally given up the ghost. Well kinda.
I didn't know that li-ion batteries don't like being charged at the same time as being discharged. So I used the GoPro as a dash cam, recording while charging from the ciggy lighter. Turns out that shortens battery life as well as generating a ton of heat in the battery, which then affects the behaviour of the camera (crashing etc).
It's got to the point where the thing won't stay alive more than 10 seconds even after a night of charging. And it works while charging but only if the temperature in the car stays really cool. If the sun is out it cooks and goes ga-ga, not responding to button presses or anything.
In theory the battery is not replaceable. The camera's not designed for it, being a fully sealed unit. And as far as I can tell, replacement batteries are simply not available.
Turns out that dash cams don't have li-ion batteries, they have super-capacitors. That means you can have them plugged into a charger and recording at the same time, for as long and as often as you like. Unlike a GoPro. So my mission is to replace the thing's battery with some super-capacitors.
That requires my GoPro Hero 5 Session to have an Out Of Body Experience (OOBE). Also commonly known as a "near-death experience". For good reason.
The first trick was getting the little bugger apart without stuffing it. I watched a couple of videos before first removing the lens cover then taking it out to the shed and attacking it with a heat-gun and screwdriver.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q3tH4qmxAU
Immensely difficult to pull apart. Took a ton of heat, leaving the plastic case a little distorted. I also decided to peel off most of the rubber cover so I could see the insides as I was worried I might slip with the screwdriver and destroy a tiny component on one of the circuit boards (did that to my computer once). Got there in the end. A pity the case is now kinda ugly. but I'll deal with that later.
The thing that looks like a tiny bit of broken white glass is actually a lens that fits over the status LED, and the tiny black thing to its right is its gasket. Fiddly wee thing to refit but I got there in the end.
The torx screws are tiny. Micro SD card in the pics for scale.
Happily, it still works...!
https://youtu.be/4QLwq3C9H_k
OK, so my next trick will be to fit some super-capacitors in there instead of the battery. Thinking of scoring some of these guys, for a grand total of about $10. And wiring in 4 of them in series-parallel.
https://nz.rs-online.com/web/p/electric ... s/7153502/
- super-capacitor.png (143.44 KiB) Viewed 1804 times
- Series-Parallel.png (68.24 KiB) Viewed 1804 times
The li-ion battery measures about 10 x 30 x 25 mm and each super-capacitor is 8 x 11.5 mm plus wiring, so I should be able to squeeze 4 of them in there. Even 2 simply wired in series (to give me 5 volt capability) would probably do the job.
Some background info:
https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/art ... rcapacitor
https://batteryuniversity.com/index.php ... igurations
Anyway I'm no electronics expert by any stretch (as is all too often obvious)
so if anyone has something helpful to throw in the mix, please do.
Would be brilliant if I can get this to work. Would sort me with an excellent dash cam that should last for years.
OK, time to go back out to the shed and pull the SW's exhaust apart. Again.