Batteries… always a thing

I have some photos to shoot this weekend, which means the charging of the batteries has begun. There are just so many batteries. Those in the picture are for the eVOLV 200 lights, but they are just the tip of the batteryburg. 8 more for the speedlights. 2 for the radio controller. 3 for the camera. Then the big backup battery to charge the phone or start charging the others if needed.

It’s a whole thing, and it has an analogue with what we do in computing. UPS batteries are the first thing that come to mind. We’ve been contacted more than once because there was a power outage and the UPS failed. Usually that is because that UPS was still on its original batteries that are of some age that is years beyond what is recommended.

You see a similar thing with battery backed cache in RAID systems. The added issue there is that for some of those older systems, the replacement batteries are no longer being made. We have had to get old battery modules back from customers so they can be rebuilt with new cells installed. There isn’t a lot of use for a soldering iron on modern equipment, but I keep one around just for the BBU on the Model 20 arrays.

There is some good news on that front. The switch from batteries to capacitors in some of the newer cache systems has been a welcome change. But the moral of the story is to check your batteries. Be they cache, or UPS, or anything else.

Have a great weekend!

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