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Photo Forum / Digital Photography / DSLR Cameras / January 2007battery chargers
I recently purchased an EOS 400D. The Canon battery charger has an indicator which changes from red to green to show that charging is complete. The problem is that I am red/green color blind. Does anyone know of a charger for Canon batteries that does not use this method? Maybe light on while charging off when done? Gordon > I recently purchased an EOS 400D. The Canon battery charger has an > indicator which changes from red to green to show that charging is [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > Gordon If you don't mind invalidating the guarantee, you can fit - or get a tech to fit - a second led to light when charging is complete. A small hole in the case to accommodate the second led, a white or blue led, and a couple of diodes should do the trick. Colin D.  SignaturePosted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com >> I recently purchased an EOS 400D. The Canon battery charger has an >> indicator which changes from red to green to show that charging is [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > small hole in the case to accommodate the second led, a white or blue > led, and a couple of diodes should do the trick. Of you can simply use your watch! :-) The charging process takes about 90 minutes or so depending on the condition of the battery pack, so all you have to do is plug it in and wait. If you have a digital watch with a count-down, make use of it. Or you can do what I do when you know you'll be using the camera the next day. Since these Li-Ion packs can not be overcharged when you leave them on the charger, simply put it on the charger the night before and when you get up the next day, the pack is ready to go. And one more thing, since Li-Ion packs work better when you top them up, it doesn't hurt to charge it often with a short charge. You can even do a partial charge, say 30 minutes, to get enough juice into it to take a few dozen shots safely, then put it back on the charger to top it off. That's partly why Li-Ion is so popular in todays electronics, it's hard to abuse them. >>> I recently purchased an EOS 400D. The Canon battery charger has an >>> indicator which changes from red to green to show that charging is [quoted text clipped - 29 lines] > That's partly why Li-Ion is so popular in todays electronics, it's > hard to abuse them. Properly designed ones, that is. Lithium ions are somewhat dangerous if they don't have protective circuitry built into the cell. NiMH and NiCads are much safer when "abused." SignaturePhil > I recently purchased an EOS 400D. The Canon battery charger has an > indicator which changes from red to green to show that charging is [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > Gordon As a person with a similar affliction (as 5-10% of the male population, I understand), I find these bloody charging leds infuriating, as they use a very similar intensity (unlike traffic lights, frinstance..!). Just a suggestion, but it's efficacy will depend on the led's in question.. You may find a few layers of green cellophane (dunno what you call it over there - transparent colored wrap) might leave the intense green largely unaffected but reduce the red enough to make it more obvious who is who.. > > I recently purchased an EOS 400D. The Canon battery charger has an > > indicator which changes from red to green to show that charging is [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > intense green largely unaffected but reduce the red enough to make it > more obvious who is who.. This was my thought as well - use a dark red (or dark green) gel or filter to make one of the LED colors go almost black...certanly cheaper and more reliable than trying to modify the charger (or getting a new one). I have close to normal color vision, but it bothers me when I see products (i.e. designers/marketers) that forget that a large chunk of the population has some form of color blindness. Austin >> > I recently purchased an EOS 400D. The Canon battery charger has an >> > indicator which changes from red to green to show that charging is [quoted text clipped - 25 lines] > > Austin I've got a Maha that does the red/green deal which I liked, but the charger for the Nikon D70s batteries has a feature that should work for anyone with color problems (except blind ... ). It blinks while charging then goes to solid when done -- it eliminates the quick glance to see if they are done, but I can see where it would be nice for people with color vision problems. Some place like this might have one you could add simply (says they don't even need a ballast resistor) and they BLINK !! http://www.elexp.com/opt_6bid.htm mikey > I've got a Maha that does the red/green deal which I liked, but > the charger for the Nikon D70s batteries has a feature that should > work for anyone with color problems (except blind ... ). It > blinks while charging then goes to solid when done -- it eliminates > the quick glance to see if they are done, but I can see where it > would be nice for people with color vision problems. The D200 charger has the same system. I don't like it, because I have to remember which state is which; neither one has any deeply-ingrained meaning, it's pretty arbitrary. (red/green is equally arbitrary, but it *is* deeply ingrained.) I do recognize the prevalence of red/green color blindness; that does make the simple easy obvious red/green system a problem for a lot of people, enough to make it probably not the right choice. > I recently purchased an EOS 400D. The Canon battery charger has an > indicator which changes from red to green to show that charging is > complete. The problem is that I am red/green color blind. Does > anyone know of a charger for Canon batteries that does not use this > method? Maybe light on while charging off when done? Do you have any disability discrimination laws that could be cited to discourage companies from doing this sort of thing? Mike SignatureIf reply address = connectfee, add an r because it is free not fee. >> I recently purchased an EOS 400D. The Canon battery charger has an >> indicator which changes from red to green to show that charging is [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > Do you have any disability discrimination laws that could be cited to > discourage companies from doing this sort of thing? Surely you jest? Discrimination my a.s! This nonsense falls in the same ridiculous category as Ray Charles bitching about the viewfinder on his 400D not being bright enough for him to see. Rita I recently purchased an EOS 400D. The Canon battery charger has an indicator which changes from red to green to show that charging is complete. The problem is that I am red/green color blind. Does anyone know of a charger for Canon batteries that does not use this method? Maybe light on while charging off when done? That's an easy one to fix. Just put a red filter over the LED. It will be bright when red and dark when green. Use a green filter if you want the opposite. > > I recently purchased an EOS 400D. The Canon battery charger has an > > indicator which changes from red to green to show that charging is [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > > Mike Oh, PUH-LEEEZE. Oh, yes, let's make the rest of society adapt to the lowest common denominator because of legislation, rather than just letting those with the disabilities learn to adapt and deal (and I'm not referring here to things to adapt for major physical disabilities, such as wheelchair access and blind accomodation, etc.). By all means, let's make manufacturers adhere to some legislated standard which requires them to make things that color-blind people would have absolutely no way of confusing. A minor disability is not an automatic right to have everyone else have to adapt to that disability rather than dealing with it yourself. We've already made it near-impossible to use latex gloves in medical or food industry [despite the fact that they are far superior to vinyl or plastic) in many areas due to legislation, because a tiny miniscule portion of society is allergic to latex. Why not legislate milk products out of existance because there are some who are lactose-intolerant? Oh - I forgot - bread! We can't have any bread because there are some who are alergic to wheat gluten. We're discriminating against them by having something that is available that they can't take advantage of, right? So let's make laws to prevent the production of breads. Heck, some people are allergic to crab - that's a disability that we should address, they shouldn't have to witness others eating crab, so let's not discriminate against them! Make crab illegal. Oh, wait - some people don't have use of one arm - let's make _everything_ required to be usable by one-handed people only. Some people (myself included) are _highly_ allergic to penicillin - so let's legislate it so that no one who is allergic will ever have to take the risk of getting any PNC accidentally, because we're so disabled that we can't take it, OK? Then of course, there's all the left-handed people, quite a percentage - and while it's not actually considered disability, it is a minority, so we therefore ought to make every manufacturer, by law, accomodate both a right- and a left-handed item wherever it might be applicable - at the very LEAST, every package with scissors in it should include both models, and require all the right handed people to pay the extra cost of accomodating their left-handed brethern - after all, we can't discriminate against them, can we? Nor should they have to bear the cost or adversity of their own situations, right? BTW, my photography mentor is red-blind. Hasn't stopped him in 28 years of professional photography. I occasionally have to point out that "that red barn over there" isn't red (or vice-versa), but it gives me something to tease him about. There ain't much else I have to tease him with (well, except maybe the lens flare I get from his bald head being somewhere near my lens). SignatureYou need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. -- Charles A. Beard >Oh, yes, let's make the rest of society adapt to the lowest common >denominator because of legislation, Oh Please! That the product was designed the way it is now is a sign that the designers simply didn't even consider red/green colorblind customers when they designed the product. A better design could be (and IMHO *should* be) implemented at NO additional cost. The "cost" of adopting different practices to accomodate people with disibilities is usually very low, in most cases so low as to not matter. This is a *perfect* case - they could choose some other colors other than red/green (e.g. red/white) which would be distinguishable by everyone, or they could add a blink feature to distinguish one case from the other for people with red/green colorblindness (e.g. blinking red to indicate charging, solid green to indicate a fully charged battery). jc Signature"The nice thing about a mare is you get to ride a lot of different horses without having to own that many." ~ Eileen Morgan of The Mare's Nest, PA > The "cost" of adopting different practices to accomodate people with > disibilities is usually very low, in most cases so low as to not [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > colorblindness (e.g. blinking red to indicate charging, solid green to > indicate a fully charged battery). For an eye-opening experience, speak with people who design and manufacture stuff like this. Even the most trivial looking things can have significant cost implications. For example, a "red/white" LED is probably 10x the cost of a reg/green, perhaps 10cents vs. 1 cents (It's probably more, actually). For a million units, that's $10,000 of direct profit right there. The "blink" feature would likely require more electronics, which can have a similar effect. Speculating: my NP-E3 charger blinks because there is probably a PIC in there and in that case there would indeed be a negligible cost hit (the LED's must be there, the change would be a few bytes of firmware, and you can do with a simple red led only, actually saving some money). It's easy to believe this kind of trivial stuff can be "passed on to the consumer", but this is actually rarely the case for stuff like this, where consumer-side prices are fixed by what the market will bear, not the cost of manufacture. Blinking red, red/white, red/green or a dancing naked woman singing the blues, the unit will sell for X. Every last penny you scrape is a penny you keep. >> The "cost" of adopting different practices to accomodate people with >> disibilities is usually very low, in most cases so low as to not [quoted text clipped - 25 lines] > or a dancing naked woman singing the blues, the unit will sell for X. > Every last penny you scrape is a penny you keep. There you go -- that's what I want -- a charger that when complete, pops up a dancing naked woman to show it is done !! (somehow, I suspect my wife would make me send it back though ... ) mikey > <eawckyegcy@yahoo.com> wrote in message <snip> > > bear, not the cost of manufacture. Blinking red, red/white, red/green > > or a dancing naked woman singing the blues, the unit will sell for X. [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > pops up a dancing naked woman to show it is done !! (somehow, > I suspect my wife would make me send it back though ... ) Imagine your surprise when the naked woman turns out to *be your wife* =8-O. Austin >> <eawckyegcy@yahoo.com> wrote in message > <snip> [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > > Austin That's OK, I know how to handle that one !! :-) mikey >>Oh, yes, let's make the rest of society adapt to the lowest common >>denominator because of legislation, [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] >colorblindness (e.g. blinking red to indicate charging, solid green to >indicate a fully charged battery). Go price a red/white LED if you can find one. Red/green are commonplace. White requires a UV diode with a phosphor--they're expensive, and making one that can also show red would involve precision in applying the phosphor. Blink might not cost much. It may seem that accomodating the disabled "doesn't cost much", but when you have to accomodate every possible disability then it gets really expensive and complex really fast. I mean why should they accomodate the red/green colorblind and not the just plain blind? > Oh Please! That the product was designed the way it is now is a sign > that the designers simply didn't even consider red/green colorblind > customers when they designed the product. A better design could be > (and IMHO *should* be) implemented at NO additional cost. :-) Agreed. This specific case is probably just designer ignorance, which is really easy to do. The cost difference is so slight that I can't imagine it's the driver. The 2-color LEDs are usually applied to save space on the circuit board or "front panel". I don't imagine either is terribly constrained in this design. More likely, this was done for aesthetics, combined with a lack of awareness. Geeking a bit... 2-color LEDs are just two separate LEDs wired opposite of each other inside one clear package. Two separate LEDs could have been designed in for nearly the same cost, no changes to the supporting electronics, and would have addressed the color-blind users. (e.g., 14.1 cents for a 2-color LED vs 16.6 cents for two single-color LEDs; and this is just 1000-pc pricing, so the margin for production-scale is much closer.) FWIW, a lot of the common LED colors are interchangeable price-wise and technically (red, amber, orange, yellow, green, etc.). But blue and white are different beasts, cost a lot more, and require different supporting circuitry. Cheers, Richard > > Do you have any disability discrimination laws that could be cited to > > discourage companies from doing this sort of thing? [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > things to adapt for major physical disabilities, such as wheelchair > access and blind accomodation, etc.). While I agree that discrimination laws are hardly appropriate to this complaint, I think you could have worded this a little better. What exactly *is* the difference between a shopping centre providing disabled-access toilets, and a company thinking about colorblindness? Have you ever considered it, for your personal webpage, perhaps? Should you? Should anyone (designers of nuclear reactor control software, or critical machinery safety control panels....)? If *you* designed chargers, would you happily ignore/annoy 5% of your market? The point is that these things aren't black and white (pun intended) - there are shades of grey, and if you can attract even an extra 2% of your market, then maybe you should think about the balance of costs on that little LED, or using the blink system. Just for the record I have an el-cheapo samsung video camera that blinks a little code to tell you how much charge it is up to - 3 blinks, then 2, then 1, then steady for fully charged. And here's a totally radical thought, maybe the *bottom line* isn't absolutely the amount of money you make... I remember when there was some pride in doing things better, just simply because it was... better. I should just get over it, huh!?! > A minor disability is not an automatic right to have everyone else have > to adapt to that disability rather than dealing with it yourself. Pardon? Did anyone say that things should be designed for the colorblind *at the expense* of everyone else? Do you object to those disabled toilets at shopping centres, taking up space? (Hmm, I better not mention the parking spaces...) > We've already made it near-impossible to use latex gloves in medical or > food industry [despite the fact that they are far superior to vinyl or > plastic) in many areas due to legislation, because a tiny miniscule > portion of society is allergic to latex. Huh? I used to work in a research lab, and never had a big issue over this one - latex gloves are still readily available, and if you have a particular workplace where this is causing a problem, maybe you should deal with it. (A quick Google on the topic reveals that 15-30% of health workers who use latex gloves frequently, develop sensitivities and allergic reactions - I'd call that cause for concern..) Anyway, assuming you are right and it is blown out of all proportion, this is a completely different question and relates to how legislation works, how compensation works, and how some aspects of society, especially litigation, has screwed everything up royally for all of us... (O: > Why not legislate milk > products out of existance because there are some who are > lactose-intolerant? Now that's just getting silly... Ok, the original suggestion about using legislation was a little off-beam, but there is no need to go ludicrously in the opposite direction, or it just sounds like you are picking a fight. ..rest of rant snipped. > BTW, my photography mentor is red-blind. Hasn't stopped him in 28 > years of professional photography. I occasionally have to point out > that "that red barn over there" isn't red (or vice-versa), but it gives > me something to tease him about. There ain't much else I have to tease > him with (well, except maybe the lens flare I get from his bald head > being somewhere near my lens). Instead of joking, have you ever talked to him about the common issues that annoy him? Why not ask what he thinks about chargers, if he uses them, or any other usability issues. Then come back and tell us. > Do you have any disability discrimination laws that could be cited to > discourage companies from doing this sort of thing? Yes, in fact, these laws exist ... by not existing. Here is how it works: 1. You view the item of interest to you and evaluate it. 2. You make a choice based on this evaluation: do I buy or do I not buy? If enough people exercise their "not buy" option in step 2, the company will be discouraged from "doing this sort of thing". Isn't it great? Note that this protocol is fully functional, and even prevents Canon from doing silly things like suing you because you failed to choose their products, due to (say) a defective brain or something, demanding they need to "prevent customers from doing this sort of thing". c.f. chargers: My NP-E3 charger has red-only lights and they flash when the charger has done it's job. My only issue is the thing is way, way, too big for the job it does. Saaaayyyy, maybe I should take Mike Coon's lead and file a massive class action anti-discrimination lawsuit against Canon and all of their retailers for selling me such a large item? It takes up space in my house, on the airplane, and so on. Will anyone join me in this legal jihad? >Do you have any disability discrimination laws that could be cited to >discourage companies from doing this sort of thing? That went over well, didn't it? It doesn't take a law to implement a perfectly reasonable solution: green cello. SignatureArnold Schwarzenegger was at the Golden Globes Monday to give away the award for Best Motion Picture Drama. He's no newcomer to the winner's circle himself. The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas once voted him most lifelike over Al Gore. Hi Gordon, People simply don't realize the challenges that are in our color-coded world. From minor annoyances, like in the workplace, to major, like choosing an occupation, the difficulties are there. I was a school nurse for many years and realized how common colorblindness it -- it affects in some degree 1:12 males and 1:200 females. Because I couldn't find literature on this disorder, I wrote two books on the condition, one for children and the other one for older readers. I wrote these books for everyone so that people without the condition would understand the challenges involved and those with the condition would have helpful hints in dealing with our color-coded world. You might enjoy my website, which is www.cvdbooks.com. Arlene Evans > I recently purchased an EOS 400D. The Canon battery charger has an > indicator which changes from red to green to show that charging is [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > Gordon |
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