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A project log for Dummy battery for Gopro 11 mini

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lion-mclionheadlion mclionhead 09/11/2025 at 18:340 Comments

The great task came to be a case which cools while also clamping the heat sink on & being as light as possible.  The entire heat sink needs to be unobstructed & well blown on.  The internet abounds with big old fans strapped on the back.  It makes lions wonder if all those 3D printed fleebay listings are just fishing.  The fan needs a different voltage than the camera.  Even without the battery eliminator, it requires the infrastructure of a pro studio camera.

The hardest codec for it is 5.3k 60fps hypersmooth.  That's burns 2.5A, but died from file corruption.  

The other 5.3k modes are limited to 30fps & burned 2A before they continued to overheat.  4k 4:3 30fps overheated.  4k 4:3 24fps was as high as it could go without file corruption or overheating.  It might be reporting some overheating events as file corruption.  The Samsung 128GB pro plus V30 was rated for 120MB/s write speed.

Centering the fan might improve the cooling but an S curve around the record button would be hard to print.  It would need a bending jig.  Only a bigger fan or 2 fans would do.  A bigger fan is acceptable for indoor use while the outdoor system could be limited to a lower bitrate.

The temperature cutoff is either a bit too conservative or the clockspeed is on the ragged edge of failure.  Phones normally get hotter.  Like the gear360, it might rely on the battery absorbing heat.

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As for voltage converters, the current chinese ones https://www.amazon.com/MP1584EN-DC-DC-Converter-Adjustable-Module/dp/B01MQGMOKI/ are rated for 3A.  Probing showed no brownouts in the 5.3k modes, when converting 7.2V to 4.5V.

It's in the range of the $25 https://www.castlecreations.com/en/cc-bec-010-0004-00 used for the raspberry pi's.  Now they're $27, as electronical inflation goes.

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Lions only got this camera for paw carrying in a marathon & getting better stabilization than the 7.  Given the limitations imposed by the cooling system, it's probably not worth putting on a robot & it might not be paw portable in the end.

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