A picture is best the answer. As you can see the barrel can be slightly shorter if need be.

OK Barry
Thank you

DIY Switching Regulator
 

The adventure continues. With all the interest in more efficient switching regulators, I decided to search out yet another DIY option for powering the EX1/3 SSD(s). I tried to narrow my search for a Canadian supplier and I discovered the Aimtec switching regulator. Designed in Canada, less than a year old, manufactured in far east and available from several distributors around the globe. I ordered my pieces from DComponents in the US at $20.85. It shipped in 3 days from Montreal Canada and it just arrived this afternoon.

The AMSR1-7805-NZ is a pin-for-pin replacement for the linear 7805 regulator and has 88-93% efficiency depending on the input voltage. So for the Sony BP-U30/60 battery delivering between 12-16 volts output that translates to a 90% efficiency rating for a 5 volt output. As you can see from the attached photo it easily fits inside the Dolgin power adaptor.

It will take a day or so to measure the actual battery life with the AMSR1-7805-NZ switching regulator powering the Corsair SSD.

Hi Barry,

Very cool, I also found a source of Aimtec convertors in the UK, they are 2W versions, but with similar characteristics, even at 80% efficiency you should get 11 hours running for a single Corsair drive if the consumption doesn't exceed 2 watts or 400mA, if current consumption is less, you get longer, and this from a BPU30 - (28W) a BPU60 (56W) should give exactly double that, or 2 drives for 11 hours each - Awsome indeed !!

2W DC-DC Convertors > Maplin

Paul

Paul, the 2W regulator should work if you stay with the USB interface. The eSATA-2 interface draws more power and this is understandable for the speed that comes with it. I have measured the actual 5-volt current draw using both interfaces for continuous read and write data transfers. See the attached:

I'm less concerned with extending the battery life than with getting if off the camera. Running the phu for 3 hours barely made a dent in the life of the bpu30, and it sounds like your testing is finding the same thing with the corsair; but having both the drive and the battery on the camera for handheld added more imbalance and weight to an already imbalanced rig (the ex3). For tripod interviews it's great, but I think I'd have to stick with cards for handholding, if both pieces need to be camera-mounted.

I'm looking to roll my own variant of this solution. All the parts or variants of them are available locally. The Rocketfish housing is a no show down under but Silverstone make an equivalent housing and dock for under $100. Bonus is the box is metal.
Only real issue I'm having is the Corsair SSD. I can order the 256GB variety at a hefty price. Question is can the camera address that much disk. I recall a comment about it being restricted to somewhat less than that but cannot find the post.

308 minutes in HQ seems to be the limit from what I've read. Roughly 85GB according to my calculator.

David is correct. The 80GB (308 min) formated capacity is what Sony currently has set in firmware. So the 256GB Corsair is overkill, although it is considerably faster than the 128GB model and therefore more power hungry. On the other hand, the 128GB model does offload 308 minutes of HQ video in 14 minutes to a SATA RAID-0 array. That's not to shabby!

I'm about 3/4 the way through measuring the BP-U30 battery life using the Aimtec AMSR1-7805-NZ switching regulator. It does not dissipate any heat whatsoever and so is indeed very efficient, more than able to run two Corsair drives if need be. The Sony battery life will be in excess of 20 hours. I should complete the actual life measurement in one more day and then will report back.

Thanks to both of you.
The only other option currently available is the M64 which would appear not to be a good choice as it's probably not MLC even though the capacity would be a nice fit with the 80GB limit.

One question, have you tried creating two volumes on the S128?

quote :"as it's probably not MLC"

Well if it is not MLC, it is then SLC, it is even better....(lot faster).

intel is making 80gig SSD (but they are expensive SLC).

My tests show that more than one FAT32 partition on a drive causes the camera to throw an "unrecognised media please change" warning, as the camera creates the 80gb single partition on formatting, it looks as though this is the limit.

I did however get 8 hours and 50 mins onto one drive, but I'm still unsure as to how it was possible.

Paul

Have you considered using the SWIT EX1/EX3-batteries. I believe they have a power outlet for external devices. Then you would not need an extra battery.

Did you mean this one, Ola? Swit S-8U62 Li-Ion 14.4v 63Wh Battery. This from nine months ago:

Presuming that's been fixed, how would the 14.4v output power the corsair?

Also noticed from an older thread some recommends for anton/bauer QR-EX3 Goldmount/Dionic90/Tandem70 charger. But if I'm going to spend a thousand dollars, I might as well just get a 32gb sxs card.

Yes, the Swit has been 'fixed' by making the lead longer. The Swit battery includes a D-Tap in the body of the battery which makes powering other devices simpler. You'd still need a 14.4V to 5V converter though.
Many of the larger 'brick' batteries also include D-Taps in the battery body and/or the battery plate. Again you'd need to do the 14.4 to 5V conversion. These batteries do give you more capacity for your dollar than the Sony or Swit batteries, excluding the cost of the charger and mounts.
If you're shooting for extended periods from a fixed location don't overlook the humble Sealed Lead Acid batteries. We've made a lot of use of the Panasonic Calcium / Lead SLAs. They're very cheap for their storage capacity and the chargers are also cheap. On the downside energy density is very low with this battery chemistry so to get 200WH the batteries are large and heavy.

Bob, Thanks for the info;what do you suggest as the simlplest/best way for converting the 14.4 to 5?

BP-U30 Battery Life with Aimtec 5-volt Regulator
 

Just completed measuring the Sony BP-U30 battery life with the Aimtec AMSR1-7805-NZ switching regulator. The regulator is very efficient and does not throw any heat whatsoever. The battery lasted for 22 hours of recording.

The 5-volt Aimtec switching regulator also fits nicely inside the bottom of a V-Mount Battery adaptor. So that provides even more options for those wanting to supplement the EX1/3 camera power as well as run with an SSD. I'm about half way through completing the mount for my SSD as well as for the Dolgin adaptor or the V-Mount adaptor. I will post pictures when it's finished. Cheers!

The Aimtec or similar regulators mentioned previously should do the job quite nicely.

So, 22 hours is approx 1.3W or 260mA at 5v average draw - stunning, you could fill 3 SSD's and have 15 hours of footage with a single BPU30 !! or a single BPU 60 will double that capacity -

I'm currently making up some card adapters with 3 metre USB cables for use on studio tripod set ups, hoping to use them with three SSD's and 3 EX1's on a shoot next week, if all the parts arrive in time that is.

Paul

This thread is reading really well. However, all this talk of regulators, ohms and voltages is way over my head. Surely, someone out there can simply make a kit that works for the masses, PLEASE ??

Superb work and hats off for pioneering this, now we just need it going into production at a sensible price, someone could make a killing here...

Stuart

Hi Stuart,

Thanks for your post.

We have been working on an Expresscard to HDD and SSD via USB, with a SATA interface for a little while, and we will be announcing the product next Monday.

We’re just doing the artwork, and packaging and we are ready to release. I’d like to wait until Monday to give you the full technical specifications, so if you could hold your questions until then that would be help me actually get the artwork and packaging done!

It's quite something to be able to record for 5 hours without worrying about changing cards or even worse tapes. Reminds me of my Panasonic DV200, that could record 4h 45mins on one tape.

Stick an MxR with a Sandisk 32GB card in it and good to go for 7 hours without reaching for your production bag.

But really 7 hours! Too long to be standing.

Just a little teaser, you can elect to use your own HDD or SSD, so you aren't locked in. But obviously we have recommendations from the testing we have done.

I don't know about making a killing, that was never the goal, just produce well designed products, that I as a cameraman and editor would want to use, and make it at a reasonable price.

Best wishes
Ross Herewini
Efilms

This is good news for end users.
Thanks to the "wonder minds" who spent time to check, to test and make it work.

Ross, after buying some of your MxR cards, I'm really looking forward to this gem!
Thanks for your efforts, but you DO deserve to make some bucks for delivering the great products that make our job easier! We are saving money by buying your products.

Hey Ross, are you also addressing the 5V power issue, or strictly interface?

Ross

Please get me a press release when you announce so that I can get that to my editors. Would love to get you some coverage.

And I'm looking forward to purchasing....

Ned Soltz

SSD EX3 Mount
 

I have completed the mount of my SSD and its Battery supply on the DeMaagd EX3 Shoulder Mount. I used the existing tapped holes on the Shoulder Mount. It allows easy removal of the SSD for off-loading. The SSD Battery supply can also feed power to the EX3 as well as power the SSD with the necessary 5-volts. One approach of many possibilities that none-the-less fits my needs.

Can someone post the pinout for the usb cable to the reader
4 usb wires
white
red
black
ground

Can't see the placement on Barry's photos

sorry these are the usb cable wires
white
green
red
black
ground

Robert, click on the second photo and it opens a new window in full size and easy to read. Page 2, post #26. The red wire (+5v) is not connected to the camera side. Cheers!

Thanks Barry
The large silver wire gets soldered to where?
And last Question
Can you run two of these at the same time to two drives?
Bob

The silver wire is called the sheath and it goes to ground. I drilled a small hole through the ground plane, just enough to thread the silver/sheath wire through and then back onto itself - soldered the end to close the loop. Then you have strain relief protection if the USB cable is pulled upon. It keeps the smaller wires from having to take any strain.

Yes, you can indeed run to drives in the exact same way as you do with SXS/etc. memory cards. One drive fills up and automatically switches over to the other, just the memory cards do. So that would be whopping 10.2 hours of record capacity. No memory card to fiddle with-get mixed up-or loose. Bonus is that the SSD off-loads 5.1hrs of video by eSATA in 14 minutes. Cheers!

Will this work with the EX1 ?? I think the memory doors maybe different between the EX1
and the EX3 ???

Barry
I had soldered it to the #1 on the opposite side.. is this wrong
I had read this in an earlier post...

Yes, it does work in the EX1 as reported so on the other forum by the good folks down-under. Choose a card that fits in the EX1 and do the mods to fit it with a USB cable. The EX1 does not have that little slot that the EX3 has for a cable to come out of the ExpressCard slot.

Pin 1 on the ExpressCard bus is ground. As you can clearly see on the daughterboard there are other pins corresponding to ground, just follow the ground plane to identify those. Cheers!

Sorry almost done...
Ok so I followed pin one on the opposite side.. and soldered it..great
Do I have to format the ssd any special way.. I know you said fat32..
Is there special software for this..?
Does the camera format the drive...

Also what does "tear down" on the ex1 mean.. remove the slot door?

Robert, sounds like your almost ready to go. If you have an ohm meter, I would suggest using it to make sure that there are no electrical shorts between the ExpressCard pins. It can easily happen when soldering. Then use the ohm meter to check for continuity between the ExpressCard pin and the USB connector end. That way you can be confident that all the electrical connections are going where they are supposed to.

The camera will do the formating just as it does with the SXS/etc. memory cards.

It's good to be specific. A better word for "tear down" is do the modification to the ExpressCard by fitting it with a USB cable. I've changed the wording in that post.

Thanks Barry
You should get a forum award.. if one exists

On the ex1 is there a mode for the sxs door or is it just left open for the cable to come out
Bob

Your welcome Robert. However, the real credit goes to fellow from Germany who discovered that USB interface works with the EX1/3 cameras. I tried it out and then did the practical work to find suitable solutions for SSD storage and the necessary 5-volt power to get the thing mobile.

To my knowledge no one has come forward yet with a mod to the EX1 door. Cheers!

success...

Ok had to format a couple of times... media had to be restored.. an then ok..

Thanks to everyone...