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Canon LP-E6NH Performance

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marshwader said:
As no one seems to have any idea what Canon are measuring, is it too cynical to assume that they are purely going by the age of the battery?

As to the question whether it is advisable to remove the battery from the camera or not, I think that depends on the type of internal clock battery the camera employs.

Cameras like my R5 are supposed to use a capacitor for that purpose and it might be irrelevant whether it holds the charge or drains over time, but for cameras, like the M6 mk2 and other M cameras that employ a non user replaceable internal clock battery it is advisable to leave a battery inside the camera, or you will shorten the life of the internal clock battery considerably.
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I just place the battery that I charged for the graph into my R5 and checked that menu setting. I've not visited that screen before. It gave me two green bars and stated 99%. That's pretty darned close to 100%. It's not a new battery, so I wouldn't expect it to be at 100%. It came with my camera, which I purchased in May of 2022. I don't know how many cycles this particular battery has, but it is my preferred battery because my other ones are Canon LP-E6 batteries or third party batteries, so it probably gets more use than the others. That said, the last time it was used was in my 5DS, not the R5. I've just started a test with the battery that was in the R5, which is an LP-E6 battery. I put the newly charged LP-E6NH into the R5.
 
BirdShooter7 said:
marshwader said:
As no one seems to have any idea what Canon are measuring, is it too cynical to assume that they are purely going by the age of the battery?

As to the question whether it is advisable to remove the battery from the camera or not, I think that depends on the type of internal clock battery the camera employs.

Cameras like my R5 are supposed to use a capacitor for that purpose and it might be irrelevant whether it holds the charge or drains over time, but for cameras, like the M6 mk2 and other M cameras that employ a non user replaceable internal clock battery it is advisable to leave a battery inside the camera, or you will shorten the life of the internal clock battery considerably.
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I don’t think it’s strictly going by age of the battery because I have batteries with two green bars that are older than one with one red bar. As far as I’ve ever seen, Canon doesn’t specify how they calculate the bar status and only gives us a vague explanation of what it means so I wouldn’t put too much weight on it aside from a red bar battery probably shouldn’t be trusted for something critical, at very minimum, have a spare on hand.
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I noticed the menu has a registration option and a delete info option. The latter was not accessible to me, so I suspect it is only available if the registration process was used. If there's any date data used, I bet it is in relation to this registration process. I've not read the portion of the manual that deals with this because it really doesn't interest me much.

Edit: OK - I just read up on this feature in the manual. You can register up to 6 batteries. The camera will track the date of last use of each registered battery and list the amount of remaining capacity. You can look up these details for any registered battery whether it is in the camera or not. They also recommend adding labels to the batteries showing the serial number.

I don't have a need for these features. I will continue to use batteries until they don't power the camera. :)

--
Victor Engel
 
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I think the percentage you see on that screen is the percentage left in the battery at that given moment, rather than it's charging potential. I just tested that with a battery that was at 87% when I took it out and returned to 100% after recharging.

So it's not how they rate batteries on my iphone for ex, where under battery health they quote "Maximum Capacity", which has reduced by 1% to 99% since I bought the phone in October 2023.
 
drsnoopy said:
Ephemeris said:
BirdShooter7 said:
PicPocket said:
drsnoopy said:
Ephemeris said:
Victor Engel said:
R2D2 said:
Ephemeris said:
R2D2 said:
Victor Engel said:
Ephemeris said:
R2D2 said:
Actually it's not the temperature swings that would have a negative impact, it's the Heat. Heat is what kills Li-ion batteries, and that final 10% of the charging cycle is what builds up the most heat (as does baking it in a car).

R2
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Why would the last 10% create the most heat? During this the current is reducing towards zero.
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Probably it's accumulating more slowly but is adding to the heat already there from earlier charging, until the cooling to ambient temperature is faster than the warming from charging. This would be another reason to charge slowly instead of quickly. Heat could dissipate while charging. I have a feeling Canon have figured all those details out and taper off the charge appropriately.
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Thanks Victor, I didn't have time to explain any more thoroughly (had to head to work). The heat accumulates the most by the end of the charging cycle. It's very bad to charge (or keep charging) a hot battery!
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It won't be hot R2. The charge currents are small.

The current is tapered as per the expeditions of the cell manufacturer until the expected cutoff, probably around 30mA.

It is quite plausible the end of the cycle isnt the point of maximum temperature for a cell, and it would be unusual if it was. So I don't think this is the right way to view it.
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Look at the last line in my post (which you ignored ;-) ). That of course describes Canon's circuitry (which prevents cooking of the battery during charging). However I've seen other 3rd party manuf that don't do so well!

In addition there are other factors that can come into play that will change the heat production curve of the charging cycle, such as immediately charging a hot freshly-depleted battery, or charging a battery when the ambient temperature is high. Every manuf I've seen recommends against doing either of these.
drsnoopy said:
drsnoopy said:
Discharge is even worse. The heat generated internally gets very high (due primarily to the increased internal resistance) as the battery gets depleted.
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If we notionally say we will pull 25W, or 3A and power will reduce the temperature of the battery should be thought about as a delta from its start point. So assuming it will be hot I also don't think is correct.
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Look at any temperature test curves done on Li-ion batteries. You'll see that huge spike at the end of the discharge cycle. Or just feel the thing with your hand!
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I looked for such a curve but didn't find one. I do notice my laptop warming up when it is charging. I've not noticed it with Canon batteries, but I don't have them sitting on my lap when they're charging either.
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It appears that discharge is what R2 was thinking about, but maximum rate of charge also won't be at the end of discharge.

There are a lot of thermal models used related to both the analysis of entropic charging but also being able to monitor/predict. For example in a car we implement certain cells discharging, other cells used in regen to better equalise the thermal energy within a pack. This is to improve performance rather than longevity

There is an open paper called something like thermal analysis of a fast charging method for high power lithium ion cells. That gives some description of ways in which thermal impacts to charging are taken into account when one wants to fast charge.
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Ephemeris, you’re clearly very knowledgeable about, and professionally involved with, battery and charging technology. I asked a question earlier that I don’t think has been answered.

Main question: What do the three bars (3 green, 2 green, or 1 red) displayed on the battery info screen actually represent?

Sub questions : Are they an actual measure of “recharge performance”? If so, how is that being measured, and how/where is that information stored? On the battery IC or in the camera? Logic would suggest in the battery IC as it reads the same in different camera bodies. Or is it a “counter”, simply documenting the number of charge/discharge cycles? Or something else, such as state of discharge before recharging? Or measuring increased internal cell resistance as the battery ages?

Canon clearly wants us to buy a new battery when we see one red bar, yet the batteries continue working.
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Thanks, I am interested in knowing what this thread started out to seek as well, but steered way off into answering. I havent been able to use those bars in any meaningful way myself
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Someone posted a link elsewhere in this thread to an article that was I think from Canon Europe. Somewhere toward the end this question is answered. Basically three green bars means a new battery, two green bars means the battery is not new but still functioning within Canon’s acceptable limits, one green bar means the battery performance is dropping near the bottom of Canon’s acceptable limit and a red bar means Canon feels the battery needs to be replaced because it’s no longer operating at full capacity.
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I've posted a few but this was the first.

Its also within some advanced camera manuals and I spotted it in the manual for the 1DX MK III charger.

https://www.eos-magazine.com/articles/eospedia/batterycheck.html

Looking for any data transfer between bAttery and camera I can look at, but I am not expecting to find any.

I did think of comparing a red bar battery to a 3 green but for us that's just the comparison of an old battery to a new so I'm not sure how helpful that is.
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Indeed - have read that and the manual(s). But it does not say what it is measuring or even what it means in terms of battery longevity (cycles, not the amount of charge remaining). Seems highly subjective yet we know it must be somehow recorded or encoded in the battery IC.
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I don't think we know this. I would hypothesise it's a measurement (by some chargers or cameras).
drsnoopy said:
And 3rd party batteries that also activate that display must either have copied or reverse engineered the information.
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Not if it's just a measurement.
 
marshwader said:
As no one seems to have any idea what Canon are measuring, is it too cynical to assume that they are purely going by the age of the battery?
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Possible that that would need measuring somehow. I have some that have told me red, and then gone back to three green.

A mystery.
marshwader said:
As to the question whether it is advisable to remove the battery from the camera or not, I think that depends on the type of internal clock battery the camera employs.
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I remove batteries from ours all the time, R5s but it doesn't need that to keep the internals running. It's a good point.
marshwader said:
Cameras like my R5 are supposed to use a capacitor for that purpose and it might be irrelevant whether it holds the charge or drains over time, but for cameras, like the M6 mk2 and other M cameras that employ a non user replaceable internal clock battery it is advisable to leave a battery inside the camera, or you will shorten the life of the internal clock battery considerably.
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Indeed.
marshwader said:
--
Machines were mice and men were lions once upon a time. But now that it's the opposite it's twice upon a time.
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