GoPro Hero3 Black - extra battery life exasperation!

[MB NZ]

Occasionally, I want a bit more battery life out of my GoPro Hero3 Black. Initially, I bought a Battery BacPac (ABPAK-301) which was fine, but there is a well recognised fault with this BacPac and my camera - once the camera battery is drained, the camera turns itself on immediately after you have turned it off. Apart from being very annoying, it doesn't do much for the battery life of the BacPac which really defeats the whole point of it! I've spoken to GoPro and they can't help.

Subsequently, I bought the Wasabi Power Extended Battery: Wasabi Power Extended Battery for GoPro HERO3 and HERO3+ : Batteries

It's a really good battery. Works flawlessly and gives recording times of over 5 hours! BUT, it turns out the unit is bigger than the BacPac. Although it fits in the housing with the BacPac backdoor, it's a tight fit and it has become apparent that the backdoor doesn't close properly and allows water ingress.

Next thought, buy the Wasabi backdoor which is designed for their extended battery. A quick look at online reviews and it seems to be quite liable to flooding, so doesn't seem like a great solution either!

Any other thoughts before I give up? Thanks.

 

[large_diver]

No great ideas, unfortunately. I've taken to changing the battery before every dive - not always convenient in a rocking and/or wet boat, but no real alternative (other than making sure you power the camera and monitor off when not shooting) if you want to make sure you have power for the entire dive and you are using the bacpack monitor and camera liberally :-(

 

[MB NZ]

Thanks for the reply. For future reference, I found a solution - sanded away all the plastic on the back of the Wasabi battery, exposing the electronics, cleaned it up and laid a piece of cut-to-size duct tape over the top just to neaten things up. It looks good if I say so myself. More importantly, it fits in the housing nicely. I now have the ability to shoot 5 hour plus underwater time lapses

It is curious that Wasabi didn't design the battery to be slightly smaller so that it is compatible with stock GoPro housings. It wouldn't have been difficult. Perhaps they did this in order to sell more of their own backdoors.

 

[flareside]

Sorry I didn't find this post sooner, I could have saved you some sanding. The back doors for the older V1 models of the battery backpac and LCD are deeper than the ones developed for the hero3 models. These are the backpacs developed for the hero2 line yet they are fully compatible with the standard housing that came with the hero3 cameras, the same housing which is now referred to as the dive housing. The battery bacpac door is 3.36mm deeper and the LCD door is 1.05mm deeper.