Raymond Zrike Posted February 18, 2022 Share Posted February 18, 2022 Does anyone know the name of this connector? My Eclair ACL came with a cord that is on one end a 4-pin Jaeger and on the other end this connector (and then I also have a male version of this connector that also goes to a 4-pin Jaeger). I’m trying to figure out alternative ways to power my ACL for the inevitability of my batteries dying. The ACL’s Jaeger connector is really rare and really annoying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raymond Zrike Posted February 18, 2022 Author Share Posted February 18, 2022 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raymond Zrike Posted February 18, 2022 Author Share Posted February 18, 2022 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Tristan Noelle Posted February 18, 2022 Premium Member Share Posted February 18, 2022 Kind of looks like a Tamiya or Mini Tamiya, which are often used in RC car batteries or Paintball/Airsoft applications. Not sure though. -Tristan 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raymond Zrike Posted February 18, 2022 Author Share Posted February 18, 2022 (edited) 2-pin Molex, maybe? Edited February 18, 2022 by Raymond Zrike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raymond Zrike Posted February 18, 2022 Author Share Posted February 18, 2022 7 minutes ago, Tristan Noelle said: Kind of looks like a Tamiya or Mini Tamiya, which are often used in RC car batteries or Paintball/Airsoft applications. Not sure though. -Tristan Wow it does look a lot like that too. Hmm... I think you might be right. The wikipedia page for Tamiya connector says they're used for battery packs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregg MacPherson Posted February 18, 2022 Share Posted February 18, 2022 What connector is on your camera? 4 pin Jaeger or Canon? Are your batteries original ACL plastic cases with jaeger connector? If you have Jaeger on camera and Jaeger on battery it would explain your two cables. The connector you show is non standard, so it doesn't matter what connector is used there. But it might be useful to veer to the standard and use 4 pin Canon there. The standard ACL cable has Jaeger at one end and Canon at the other. ACLI has Jaeger on the camera and mine had Canon on the battery. ACLII has Canon on the camera and Jaeger on the battery. If you have a standard plastic battery case with Nicad cells, which are a real pain, you could switch to NiMhi cells and have less trouble if you are handy with solder. Get cells with tabs, high Ah. Need to buy a charger on eBay. Other guys have stitched together non standard battery setups for the ACL. Search the forum. Some other replies as I write. Hope this is still usefull. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raymond Zrike Posted February 19, 2022 Author Share Posted February 19, 2022 56 minutes ago, Gregg MacPherson said: What connector is on your camera? 4 pin Jaeger or Canon? Are your batteries original ACL plastic cases with jaeger connector? If you have Jaeger on camera and Jaeger on battery it would explain your two cables. The connector you show is non standard, so it doesn't matter what connector is used there. But it might be useful to veer to the standard and use 4 pin Canon there. The standard ACL cable has Jaeger at one end and Canon at the other. ACLI has Jaeger on the camera and mine had Canon on the battery. ACLII has Canon on the camera and Jaeger on the battery. If you have a standard plastic battery case with Nicad cells, which are a real pain, you could switch to NiMhi cells and have less trouble if you are handy with solder. Get cells with tabs, high Ah. Need to buy a charger on eBay. Other guys have stitched together non standard battery setups for the ACL. Search the forum. Some other replies as I write. Hope this is still usefull. I believe it is a 4-pin Jaeger on my camera, though I don’t know what a Canon looks like. I’ll attach a photo. My batteries do have the plastic cases. A piece of soft padding covers up the Eclair branding I believe (the previous owner told me they added this pad themselves). The battery also have the 4-pin connector. It looks very similar to the one that’s on the camera. Is it possible they both are Jaeger? When I bought the camera a couple years, the seller said it was an ACL 1.5, so I’d presume it would be most similar to the original ACL. The batteries say on the outside Nickel Cadmium, but I believe the previous owner had them re-celled, so I am not sure what the cells are. Although with the charger I have, I set it to the NiCad setting and the battery seems to charge fine. Takes forever though. I am not at all handy with a solder—was trying to work around soldering a new cable by using the one I have here, connecting (what seems to be) the male Tamiya to a female-Tamiya-to-DC cable. Then connect that to the 12V out of a v-mount plate. But I definitely am no electrical engineer and basically have no idea what I’m doing haha Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raymond Zrike Posted February 19, 2022 Author Share Posted February 19, 2022 Here’s a photo of the connector on the battery. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregg MacPherson Posted February 19, 2022 Share Posted February 19, 2022 (edited) Those are both Jaeger. The Canon is an XLR 4, easy to find images online. Not hard to solder but if your soldering is bad maybe the Tamiya idea is better. Be careful with battery polarity. Check the wiring diags in the manuals if you need. If just replacing one of the Tamiya connectors just keep positive to positive and neg to neg. ACLII has a fuse visible at the back of the camera base that I think protects it, ACL I does not. Reverse polarity is bad for ACLI. Does the 1.5 have a visible fuse? You could ask the prev owner whether he recelled with NiCad or NiMhi. Or open the case and see. NiCad are much harder to look after, especially if not used for months. NiMhi are much better Edited February 19, 2022 by Gregg MacPherson more info Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raymond Zrike Posted February 19, 2022 Author Share Posted February 19, 2022 38 minutes ago, Gregg MacPherson said: Those are both Jaeger. The Canon is an XLR 4, easy to find images online. Not hard to solder but if your soldering is bad maybe the Tamiya idea is better. Be careful with battery polarity. Check the wiring diags in the manuals if you need. If just replacing one of the Tamiya connectors just keep positive to positive and neg to neg. ACLII has a fuse visible at the back of the camera base that I think protects it, ACL I does not. Reverse polarity is bad for ACLI. Does the 1.5 have a visible fuse? You could ask the prev owner whether he recelled with NiCad or NiMhi. Or open the case and see. NiCad are much harder to look after, especially if not used for months. NiMhi are much better Well looking back at the previous owner’s listing, they did say that the batteries were re-celled with NiMh. I’ve had my Tenergy charger set to NiCd… oops. Hope it didn’t damage the batteries. I’ll set up the charger for NiMh and see how it goes. I was hoping to consolidate the camera’s battery and my other equipment to a single v-mount battery, but I could just as easily keep using these NiMh batteries and just mount a light battery on top for everything else. Would I only encounter the reverse polarity issue if I were to solder a new connector instead of the Tamiya? It seems like the Tamiya connector is somewhat common enough that I could probably find a pre-made female Tamiya to DC or d-tap (but I guess it would have to be a 12V regulated d-tap cable which would be rarer). This has been quite informative so thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raymond Zrike Posted February 19, 2022 Author Share Posted February 19, 2022 By the way, do you know there are two female Jaeger connectors on both batteries? I’ve just been using either one arbitrarily—is it supposed to be one is for charging, one is for power out? Also, when a battery is re-celled, does the battery keep the same mAh capacity? The battery says 1.2Ah, but that was as a NiCd battery. I’m not sure what the current limit is for these batteries after they’re been re-celled with NiMh—I’m setting my charger to .9A current just to be safe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raymond Zrike Posted February 19, 2022 Author Share Posted February 19, 2022 …and I just found a male Jaeger to male 4-pin XLR cable (Cannon?) among the ruckus. It’s not a normal cable though—it’s got some sort of chip in the center of it. Maybe some capacitors? (I’m really showing my lack of engineering expertise right now). Covered in yellow tape. Is this possibly a regulated 12V cable? It also has “VCLX” written on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raymond Zrike Posted February 19, 2022 Author Share Posted February 19, 2022 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregg MacPherson Posted February 19, 2022 Share Posted February 19, 2022 (edited) Reverse polarity meaning positive and negative are reversed at the camera. If all you are doing is replacing a Tamiya conector just make sure that it's black to black and red to red (assuming that the original wiring is correct). If it's not clear then get a friend who does electronics to do it for you. The two Jaeger connectors on the battery...use either. ACLs don't like the V getting low. So I would be cautious of adding more load to the battery with accessories. You need to know what the Ah is of the NiMhi cells. Ah can be a lot higher than 1.2. It will be written on the cells. Normally if you recell you note it on the case. Ask the prev owner, or just open the box. For higher fps you need the V up and the biggest Ah you can. I don't know what A for the charger, but your 900mA doesn't sound slow to me. Google it, there will be something. There is some basic electronics in my battery cases that I think is for the original Charger to read the NiCad battery behaviour. Not sure what one does with that when switching to NiMhi, maybe just ignore it. I'm not an electronics guy either, so can only guess that you have an in line voltage regulator in that pic. Last pic looks like a canon XLR-4 Edited February 19, 2022 by Gregg MacPherson more info Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raymond Zrike Posted February 19, 2022 Author Share Posted February 19, 2022 Okay I’ll keep a battery dedicated for the ACL and a separate one for everything else. There’s a note on the case that is illegible that could be the mAh. The previous owner is unreachable at this point. Is popping open the battery a safe thing to do? Doing so won’t kill the battery and/or me? Might take out the screws and look at the cells. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raymond Zrike Posted February 19, 2022 Author Share Posted February 19, 2022 I didn’t die, though I didn’t get much info out of it. Hard to tell what the batteries are unless I completely took it apart: https://imgur.com/a/HZ7ech8 I think I’ll contact the shop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregg MacPherson Posted February 19, 2022 Share Posted February 19, 2022 If you lift the end of the battery pack up a bit and spread the opening in the plastic cover you may see the Ah spec on a cell. can do at both ends. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Klockenkemper Posted February 19, 2022 Share Posted February 19, 2022 Through some searching, I found an old Akkuman catalog; the cells are: 3372319 Saft VHCS3200 3,2Ah NiMH Sub C. Normally I would say that cells above 3000mah should have no trouble running the camera at high speed. However, given that the pack's manufacture date is June 2005, the cells' capacity are likely much reduced at this point. I would consider having the pack re-celled. Sub-C NiMH cells can be found with capacities up to 5000mah, but higher capacity cells often also have more pronounced self discharge. When I owned an ACL, I never needed more than 12V - the motor could quickly reach 75fps with high-amp NiMH cells. I would advise against using a V-mount or lithium chemistry battery without a voltage regulator. The circuit board image you posted does look similar to a voltage regulator, with the small screw on the blue component probably being for voltage adjustment. "VCLX" is a model of block battery made by Anton Bauer that has a 14.4V 4-pin XLR output, which makes the regulator theory very likely. There are D-tap to 4-pin XLR cables on the market that could make it possible to use a V-mount with the regulated cable. You should test the cable's output with a multimeter before connecting it to the camera. I would highly recommend having a professional, or a friend who is savvy with electronics, check things out for you! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raymond Zrike Posted February 19, 2022 Author Share Posted February 19, 2022 Great info, thanks! I don’t think I’ll be running the camera above 24fps for right now, so I’m probably fine, but any recommendations for somebody who can re-cell the batteries in the US? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregg MacPherson Posted February 19, 2022 Share Posted February 19, 2022 Daniel may be right suggesting a re-cell due to age, but if only running 24fps you may be fine for a while. Some short notes on charging rates and cell behaviour here... https://www.powerstream.com/NiMH.htm#:~:text=Fastest Charging,-hours for 1.5 hours). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Switaj Posted February 25, 2022 Share Posted February 25, 2022 The circuit board is a voltage regulator. The chip is an LM2596, a common step down switching regulator, the black potted cylinder is an inductor. The blue trimmer pot in all likelihood sets the output voltage, that type of pot usually has multiple turns, so they are used for fine adjustment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Switaj Posted February 25, 2022 Share Posted February 25, 2022 The connector looks like something out of one of the Molex pin & socket families, but there are a bewildering array of options to those. Can you measure the pin pitch? Common pitches are 6.3, 6.7, 7 or 9.9mm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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