Foolography Community

How much battery drain is normal?
I have an N2 (fw up to date A1.4.5/B1.4.9/C1.4.0), on a Nikon Z6 (fw 3.10).
It will kill a fully charged battery in about 8 days. Maybe less, but that was about the number of days both times. I've only had the N2 a short time.
Is there anything I can do to reduce this...short of unplugging or pulling the battery. One of the things I really liked about the N2 was it's very small size allowing me to leave it attached without it interfering with my normal shooting. Camera is used intermittently, usually at least every 2 weeks but I've never had the battery completely drained until N2 was attached.

Bluetooth seems to be active long after camera is turned off and app shutdown. Yellow LED will flash slowly for 5 min or so and then go out but if app is opened 30+ minutes later, I can still connect to the N2 without powering on the camera.
Any help appreciated.
Regards,
Bill G.

Billgriz57 wrote: ↑

November 8th, 2020, 5:30 pm

How much battery drain is normal?
I have an N2 (fw up to date A1.4.5/B1.4.9/C1.4.0), on a Nikon Z6 (fw 3.10).
It will kill a fully charged battery in about 8 days. Maybe less, but that was about the number of days both times. I've only had the N2 a short time.
Is there anything I can do to reduce this...short of unplugging or pulling the battery. One of the things I really liked about the N2 was it's very small size allowing me to leave it attached without it interfering with my normal shooting. Camera is used intermittently, usually at least every 2 weeks but I've never had the battery completely drained until N2 was attached.

Bluetooth seems to be active long after camera is turned off and app shutdown. Yellow LED will flash slowly for 5 min or so and then go out but if app is opened 30+ minutes later, I can still connect to the N2 without powering on the camera.
Any help appreciated.
Regards,
Bill G.

Hi Bill,
This is a known problem with the current designed firmware architectural design, and AFAIK this architectural design is being reworked to overcome this battery-drainage problem once and for all. All Nikon camera users suffer from this battery drainage problem, so I am eaglerly looking forward to the next major firmware and App update, which is going to be a big one.

Have patience, it sure it being solved in the near future. I want this problem to be fixed as well. My batteries drain in the same amount of time, which is of course unacceptable for a Nikon user that has never experienced this without the Unleashed attached. If you search the forum posts, you will see that this issue is discussed in great detail before. It requires a complete rework of App and firmware to overcome this problem. Therefore no solution is yet provided. Stay tuned for the next major update which hopefully solves this problem for good without any bugs to squeeze after the update.

Greetings,
Unfoolishly

Thanks,
Saw the previous post from a year or so ago but got the impression it had been resolved on the earlier fw.
Bill G.

Billgriz57 wrote: ↑

November 9th, 2020, 1:20 am

Saw the previous post from a year or so ago but got the impression it had been resolved on the earlier fw.

That seems to be an illusion. It still isn't resolved, because they have created a new architectual design to overcome this. And that is a lot of work to implement correctly.
If it was just a small fix, they would have released it with a small firmware and App update sooner, is my impression. It seems to be a real hard problem that could not be fixed easily within the current architectual design.
Greetings,
Unfoolishly

Hi Bill,

Sorry for the trouble.

The battery drain is not normal, and comes from a bug. However, it only happens in very few cases. Mostly it happens if you change camera batteries or memory cards while the camera is off, and do not turn on and off the camera after the battery change. The problem is that Nikon internally turns on the the camera whenever you change batteries or memory cards, mostly to read the number of images that still fit on your card, which gets displayed on the top screen of your camera, even when the camera is turned off. This event wakes up the Unleashed. We do have a mechanism which checks the power on state of the camera, but because we had to have a fallback for this check for older Nikons like the D200, which don't tell us the power-on/power-off state, there was a bug in exactly that check. The main part of the bug is that we then start the routine of attempting to communicate with the camera, and even though that fails, we don't ever stop, causing a (relatively) enormous power drain.

Unlike Unfoolishly suggests: it is not an illusion that the powerdrain can be kept under control. For now, you'll just need to turn on and off your camera after changing batteries or memory cards. At the same time, we have actually fixed the bug properly in our Firmware quite a while ago, but due to various circumstances, we cannot yet release the Firmware. We have made so many changes in the last months, and our testing has been halted due to some issues in the apps, that we could not yet finish the many tests required before a release.

I hope this helps!

Oliver wrote: ↑

November 9th, 2020, 2:33 pm

Unlike Unfoolishly suggests: it is not an illusion that the powerdrain can be kept under control. For now, you'll just need to turn on and off your camera after changing batteries or memory cards. At the same time, we have actually fixed the bug properly in our Firmware quite a while ago, but due to various circumstances, we cannot yet release the Firmware. We have made so many changes in the last months, and our testing has been halted due to some issues in the apps, that we could not yet finish the many tests required before a release.

Hi Oliver,
I did not write that. I wrote "SEEMS to be an illusion". I did NOT write: "It IS an illusion".

See definition of 'seems' here: SEEMS

AFAIK you can quickly power down the Unleashed after the user only switched the camera memory card(s) and leaves the camera in the OFF state. The Unleashed can detect, because it is triggered by the camera into an ON state due to memory cards switching, if it is being used or not. Did the App connect within a certain amount of time? Did the camera turn ON again after the memory card switch within a certain amount of time (while in OFF state)? If you do not encounter any activity for a while, you can safely assume the Unleashed isn't going to be used because the camera isn't used either. Thus: go back to real deep sleep and thus almost no power draining from the battery.

So "SEEMS to be an illusion" means that you cannot prevent power draining on a Nikon camera for the full 100% because the design of both the Nikon camera AND the Unleashed are not a match made in heaven. Unlike the Canon camera's, in which the power is shut off completely when the camera is turned OFF, this is not the case with Nikon camera's and thus some drainage will occur eventually.

But you CAN decrease the amount of power drainage on Nikon camera's when the Unleashed is attached by using a firmware and App that implements this idea, which I SEEM to belief that this is solved in a next firmware and App update.

A lot of SEEMing these days ;-)

Greetings,
Unfoolishly

Like I said: the power drain is caused by a bug in how we detect this state (camera actually off, but internally on temporarily due to sd/battery/lens change), which is already fixed.
It does not get "more" fixed by adding more checks like you suggest - all those things are already in place, and we even added a new "completely off" state to conserve even more power. But as I've stated many times - there should be as good as no discerneable change in battery usage there because of that, except maybe after a few months of not using the camera. That said, due to the bug, none of the other checks help anything, as we got stuck in a "trying to check usb availability loop", which happened before taking everything else into consideration.

Oliver wrote: ↑

November 9th, 2020, 5:36 pm

Like I said: the power drain is caused by a bug in how we detect this state (camera actually off, but internally on temporarily due to sd/battery/lens change), which is already fixed.
It does not get "more" fixed by adding more checks like you suggest - all those things are already in place, and we even added a new "completely off" state to conserve even more power. But as I've stated many times - there should be as good as no discerneable change in battery usage there because of that, except maybe after a few months of not using the camera. That said, due to the bug, none of the other checks help anything, as we got stuck in a "trying to check usb availability loop", which happened before taking everything else into consideration.

Hi Oliver,
Yes, I do get that, and I am thankful for the extra "complete off"-state, which will help a lot in bringing down battery drainage over a longer period of not using the camera, but using the App with a different camera. But it's more the design of the Nikon camera which forces the Unleashed to be turned on, even when it doesn't get used anyhow.
I wonder why Nikon does turn on the ports or camera when the sd/battery/lens is changed when the camera is OFF. Another thing I never quite understood is why Nikon leaves on the display to show the number of photo's to be taken. I sure don't need that information when the camera is turned OFF. If I want to know this, I would turn ON the camera and see what it says. To me that is a design decision of Nikon that I cannot find useful, nor can I explain it what the rationale of this is?

Analogy:
- When you fill up the gas in your car, do you do that while the car is turned ON, or when the car is turned OFF?
- When you exchange tires of your car, do you do that while the car is turned ON, or when the car is turned OFF?
- When you mount a roof rack on your car, do you do that while the car is turned ON, or when the car is turned OFF?

That is why I don't "get it" why Nikon (or any camera manufacturer that applies the same principle) would turn ON the "car" for a very short amount of time just to check that:
- the gas tank is filled up?
- the tire is exchanged?
- the roof rack is mounted?

It would seem that the car should check some of these things when the user starts the car, so the car can check these things? But maybe I am old fashioned...

To make myself very clear: it is NOT the Unleashed that is the problem here, but the camera design that forces the Unleashed to take measures so that the battery does get drained at a very minimum. It seems to be an illusion that you cannot prevent this problem with ANY electronics device you attach to the camera that awakens when the sd/battery/lens is exchanged, and thus consumes power for a while. You can only minimize the drainage a little more for certain conditions/situations. I highly doubt that Nikon is changing its design of its ports/camera and the power usage and battery draining problem, because that would break backwards compatibility.

That is the real problem: you don't let your car running while doing your grosseries in a shoppingmall.

Conclusion: I am not suggesting that the problem lies with the Unleashed, but due to the design of the Nikon camera's, the Unleashed is forced to take measures. It's not the Unleashed's its fault, but the combination of the camera design and ANY electronics attached to the ports that makes use of the battery of the camera and wakes up anytime the camera is turned on, even in the OFF-state.

I hope it's now clear that I wasn't pointing out the Unleashed as "the problem".

Greetings,
Unfoolishy

So, bottom line, just to be clear....
For now, I can reduce (but not eliminate) this battery drain by turning power on and then off after I remove and replace battery or memory card. Unleashed should then recognize the off state.
Future improvements planned.
Thanks,
Bill G.

Billgriz57 wrote: ↑

November 12th, 2020, 2:05 pm

So, bottom line, just to be clear....
For now, I can reduce (but not eliminate) this battery drain by turning power on and then off after I remove and replace battery or memory card. Unleashed should then recognize the off state.
Future improvements planned.
Thanks,
Bill G.

Hi Bill,

No, you cannot let the Unleashed know to turn OFF by turning ON and OFF the camera. When a SD card/lens/battery is changed, the camera turns ON and OFF automatically, which activates the Unleashed, even if the camera and Unleashed are NOT going to be used at all. That is a Nikon design 'flaw' (at least, that is how I see it).

You as a Nikon camera and Unleashed user cannot do anything to reduce battery drainage by yourself or by your activities. The next firmware and App update will reduce battery drainage even more, but no 100% can be accomplished. It's the new firmware and App update you need!

Plainly said: you cannot eliminate battery drainage to 100%, but you can reduce it a lot. It's the camera design (on Nikon camera's) that makes it possible to drain the battery. What the Unleashed can do with a new firmware and App update is reduce the battery drainage even more, but you will never reach 100% of no drainage. The camera design is the main problem, but a new Unleashed firmware update can reduce it a bit more. And anything that contributes to reducing battery drainage is welcome and a bonus.

I think the Foolography team is "sqeeuzing the bits" out of the firmware to make it possible to have less battery drainage, but 100% no drainage SEEMS to be an illusion.

One of the reasons for the firmware adjustments was/is that the Unleashed should not keep listening to Bluetooth connections after the camera is turned OFF for a while. And this "while" is for every person different. That is why it needs to be configurable. Some users leave the camera in the closet for weeks and when they pick up the camera to be used again, they find the battery out of energy (fully drained). Other users will want to turn OFF the Unleashed after a hour of not using the camera. It will reduce the battery drainage because the Unleashed knows that it doesn't have to keep on listening to Bluetooth connections coming from the App. And there are some other scenario's that come into play when it comes down to reducing battery drainage. But I won't go into much details about this. Sqeeuzing the bits is just a way of figuring out where you can optimize the firmware so that the hardware saves some energy while in operation, in standby or in "off"-state.

Hope this helps (and doesn't start a new discusion ;-)).

Greetings,
Unfoolishly