Losing weight the easy way

Back around 2009 I sold my Alien Bee lights and upgraded to some Hensel Porty Premiums (and one O.G. Hensel Porty) because of not only their superior performance but also because of their portability.  I still do studio styled work but a lot more of my stuff has been on-location and/or required me to be able to transport my lighting around from place to place.

The Porty Premium Plus, in all it's glory.

Technology has changed a lot since then though.  Although the packs still kick ass, they've been eclipsed not only by Hensel themselves with newer battery technology but by other companies also.  Hensel came out with the Porty Lithium series which cut a lot of weight off of the packs, and Alien Bees have since come out with not only their Einstein studio strobes but they've also come out with the Lithium based Vagabond portable power generator.  In comparison the original Porty and Porty Premium packs feel like lead bricks because, well...  there actually IS a lead brick inside of them.  :)  Let me tell you from experience that it ABSOLUTELY SUCKS lugging around a lead brick, especially when trudging through sand on a beach shoot.  :D  When I was in my late 20's/early 30's it wasn't that big of a deal.  As I start my 40's I can definitely say that this getting old shit is starting to suck.  :D

For a while now I've been contemplating trying to retrofit my Porty packs with Lithium batteries but on the surface it's not a straight forward or easy task.  You not only have to worry about sourcing the lithium batteries, but you'd have to source a battery management board, AND you'd have to most likely replace the Hensel battery chargers too.  After looking into it a few years ago I all but gave up on the idea.

Recently though my packs have been in need of new batteries.  The batteries are getting up there in age; typically a lead-acid battery will only last six years max before it stops holding a significant charge.  When that happens to the Hensel batteries it starts causing all sorts of weirdness with the packs themselves.  No word of a lie here, my O.G. Porty (the one that has the battery in a trap door on the bottom, not the newer revision that has a battery tray like the Porty Premium) will turn itself on spontaneously when the battery starts going south.  :D  The Premium packs won't fire correctly, will shut off, etc.  Until you figure out what's going on you start to think the packs themselves are damaged, but it's nothing more than a bad battery causing the problems.

So, knowing that I was going to need new batteries soon, I decided to look once more into the lithium route.  Thankfully technology has progressed far enough where it's now possible to replace the SLA AGM batteries in the Hensel Porty Premium with lithium based batteries and it doesn't require any modification to the pack or chargers either.

The Original Gangsta (O.G.) Hensel Porty w/1200 watt-seconds of symmetrical love per port. :)

Hensel themselves now make a Lithium battery for the Porty Premium, but at $685 it's not exactly "economical" ( http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/755807-REG/Hensel_1494_Battery_Drawer_with_Lithium.html ).  Hell, to replaced the SLA battery in an existing Porty Premium battery tray with a genuine Hensel battery, it costs a little over $150 too ( http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/831176-REG/Hensel_4791_Battery_for_Porty_Premium.html ).

If you're like me though, you're frugal.  You also know that the genuine Hensel SLA battery is nothing more than a relabeled $30 generic SLA battery someone else makes.  So I figured that the same situation must be at play with the new lithium battery equipped battery drawer, and that if I could figure out who made the battery, I could retrofit my existing battery drawers to the newer battery technology.

I don't know who makes the batteries that are in the Hensel 1494 battery drawer, but CTC Battery, Inc. out of California makes a drop-in replacement for the standard SLA battery that has a built-in battery management system that lets you replace pretty much any SLA battery with it instead.

You can see the full specs on their web site here:  http://www.ctcbattery.com/LiFePO4-Rechargeable-Battery/CTC-12-8V-13-2Ah-153-6Wh-Lithium-Iron-Phosphate-LiFePO4-Rechargeable-Battery

Just like losing weight around your waist the weight loss comes at a price.  Although there's a lot of benefits to losing the unnecessary weight, you do end up paying more to do it (i.e. having to buy new clothes, paying more to eat healthier, etc).  Before you get all excited, know that the battery isn't exactly cheap; or at least not as cheap as an SLA battery.  Amazon sells the battery for $170 (http://www.amazon.com/Phosphate-replaces-LC-R1211P1-LC-CA1212P1-WKA12-12F2/dp/B00H7I11P6/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1437239953&sr=8-10&keywords=12.8v+lithium+iron).  Still, for what Hensel wants for one battery from them, you can afford to upgrade FOUR of your existing battery drawers and still have money left over to buy the soldering iron you're going to need to do the replacement (http://www.amazon.com/Iso-Tip-7971-SolderPro-Butane-Soldering/dp/B001RIDT84/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1437240007&sr=8-4&keywords=butane+soldering+iron) !

Now are there any trade-offs with going to this lithium battery?  Yes, definitely!  First, the good trade-offs:

• It's about 60% lighter than the stock SLA battery!
• It lasts about 30% longer too!
• Because there's a battery management controller built right into the battery housing you can continue to use the stock fast chargers that came with the Hensel packs!
• They hold their charge for a lot longer than an SLA battery.
• If you treat them right you'll get more discharge/recharge cycles out of them than a comparable SLA battery.

The not so good trade-offs:

• I can't speak to the Hensel branded lithium battery, but with the CTC battery you lose the ability to use fast recycle if you go over 8.0 power on the pack. What happens is the battery itself turns off because it thinks there's a short circuit (you then have to remove the battery, plug it back in, and then power the pack back up).  The way around it is to put the pack in slow recycle mode.  For me the reduced weight and the increased power capacity completely out-weight the need to use slow recycle over 8.0 power so it's not a big deal.  Even with SLA batteries I usually used slow recycle mode anyways to extend the life of the batteries.
• I haven't tested this for sure, but knowing how lithium batteries work in laptops, chances are if you use the pack in a studio setup with the fast charger connected (so it's charging the pack as you use it), you'll probably shorten the life of the battery significantly.  The only major benefit SLA batteries have over lithium packs is that they don't care if you charge them as you use them.  As long as you don't completely discharge them to a zero volt state and sulfate the battery in the process, they'll take the abuse.  Lithium battery packs?  Yeah... they REALLY dislike it when you do that to them.  The work-around is to either keep an SLA equipped battery tray to use "in-studio" so you can fast-charge it while you use the pack, or keep spare LiFePO4 equipped battery trays on chargers and swap them in as needed.  I converted three of my five battery trays to LiFePO4 batteries; the two remaining SLA's are still good so I'll be using them in this fashion.
• Lithium based batteries have a really nasty habit of catching fire if you expose them to water.  If you think about it, on one hand putting these kinds of batteries in a light pack that can get expose to water isn't the best idea.  On the other hand you would have to go completely out of your way and do something INCREDIBLY STUPID to get the innards of the batteries wet.  The lithium packs themselves are sealed in a battery carrier that looks identical to the one that SLA batteries are made from.  In other words, water isn't getting in there unless you intentionally break the housing.  You're also installing the batteries into a removable plastic battery tray, and that in turn gets shoved into a metal encased housing. The innards of the batteries aren't getting exposed to water by accident.

In other words you'd have a higher chance of hitting the jackpot in a lottery... twice... than the lithium inside the battery getting expose to water.  The only reason I'm mentioning it though is that I know that some idiot, somewhere, will somehow manage to kill themselves and set fire to everything around them because they cracked the battery open to see if it'd catch fire if they poured water into it.

• I haven't tested this myself yet either, but chances are that the battery gauge on the pack will not properly display the discharge state of the battery.  That's because the controller in the pack will try to put out a constant voltage, so even though the battery is low, the pack will "think" the battery is full.  That's why if you look closely at the Hensel lithium battery tray it has a separate battery indicator.  Not a deal breaker for sure but something to be aware of.

There is one other thing to mention here, and that's you can't easily convert the O.G. Porty to lithium unfortunately.  :(  Although you can buy a LiFePO4 battery that will fit exactly into the Porty, the problem is that the power draw is just too high for too long a period of time.  The battery management board will think there's a short and cut the power output, so you won't be able to use the pack above a certain power threshold.  The O.G. Porty doesn't have a slow recycle mode either so you can't get around the issue easily.

If you've read all this and you thought to yourself:  "I have an Alien Bees Vagabond 150/300 or Vagabond 2.  I should be able to do this to my pack too!", well you can... to a certain degree that is.

Theoretically you could retrofit the original Vagabond 150/300 with one of these lithium batteries and it most definitely would work.  The problem is the amp draw on the battery.  Doing some sleuthing around it appears that the Samlex 150W inverters used in the Vagabond can draw up to 20A from the battery.  You would have to test this yourself to be sure but with one inverter you'd *probably* be fine with up to a B800 at full power.  You'd have to do your own testing though (and you assume all risks and liabilities in the process), so if I'm wrong about that, tough cookies.  :P :)

With two (the Vagabond 300, which is just two 150w inverters in one package) would probably NOT work since combined they've be drawing 40A at full load.

The Vagabond 2 would be a little more flexible since it has a slow recycle mode.