PV-BP50 Battery Adapter VHS Camcorder 12v

thingiverse

This is an adapter that allows you to use 3s Lithium Polymer battery packs in place of PV-BP50 lead acid batteries in your old VHS camcorder. It is designed to fit a Panasonic Omnimovie PV900d really nicely. Your device might need filing or fitting (let me know in the comments). The majority of old full sized VHS camcorders all seem to use this same style of battery (but not the small VHS-C camcorders).This project is perfect for those of us who picked up a VHS camcorder in a thrift store that came with no battery, came with a dead battery, or was missing its accessories entirely. In testing, this pack with a 3200mah lipo allowed me to record two full VHS tapes, with rewinding, and had a little left over. The cutoff for the camera was just about perfect for the lipo, and the battery indicator in the viewfinder was dead on accurate. Needed materials to construct this battery pack are as follows.-The 3d print in this post-A 3S LiPo pack that fits the 3d printed shell. I'm using the E-flight EFLB32003S. It is a 3S, 3200mah 20C pack. I'm using this because I just so happened to have a few laying around... but any 3S lipo of similar size will work. The dimensions are roughly 3/4 inches thick, 5 inches long, and 1 5/8 wide. There's fudge room on length and width, but not thickness. Try to keep the pack capacity above 2000mah, to mirror the original Lead Acid packs.-Battery Tabbing Strips, nickel... used to make the positive and negative contacts on the bottom of the pack. Any thin piece of metal sheet would work here as long as you can solder to it. -Wire... minimum 12 gauge or thicker. Used to connect battery contacts to a battery plug of your choice. -Battery connector... could be XT60 or similar. Allows you to hot swap in lipo packs, so you only need to assemble one adapter. Mine has the EC3 connector because that's what I had laying around. Tools required-Soldering iron-Heat shrink-LiPo Balance Charger (like the IMAX RC B3)WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNINGDo not charge a lipo battery in the original lead acid charger that was included with your device. You will burn your house down. Use an appropriate BALANCE charger for lipo batteries. You can get one for 10 bucks on ebay, so just go get it! It's called the IMAX B3. It's small, light, cheap, and does the job nicely. Positives of using LiPo vs Lead acid.-The energy density is higher in LiPo-LiPo are easier to purchase/find-It's lighter-The minimum discharge level is lower in lipo. You cannot discharge a lead acid past 50% without damaging it, but lipo is happy to be discharged to near 100%. Just don't drop past 3 volts per cell, and you're golden. This means you get more bang for your buck.-Cycle life is higher in lipo than lead acid. Lipo has a 500 charge cycle life. Lead acid is 200 (at best).-Shelf life is better in lipo. As long as you store a lipo at roughly 75% charge (11.1-11.4 volts for 3S), the pack will last for years. Lead acid starts dying the instant the acid is added at the factory. My lipo packs used for this project are already 8 years old, and they still have full capacity.Negatives of Lipo vs Lead Acid-It costs more money -You have to use the correct charger