Isn't there a capacitor (or capacitors connected together) that you could use in G1WH instead of the stock battery that would work without having to touch the firmware? I mean a capacitor that would be able to power the camera for as long as it needs to be powered on the stock G1WH firmware after it is disconnected from the power source (i.e. a few seconds). Or would that kind of capacitor be too big for this camera?
I can image that it could make a difference whether you use the screen off feature or not, as the camera for sure uses much more power in these last few seconds of recording when the LCD is on.
You might be able to use high capacity supercaps to power the camera but they will be too big to fit inside the G1W housing. The solution is to mount them outside the camera.
See THIS thread for photos and an explanation of what I am talking about.
Regarding the whole idea of installing your own super-capacitors in a battery powered camera, YES, it can work but the bottom line is that unless the firmware is designed to accommodate capacitors it can be problematic and after over a year of dedicated experimentation and some good success, I would not recommend it.
In my case, I installed super-capacitors in a GT680W (very similar in many ways to the G1W series whose heritage stems from the LS and GT family of
NT96650+AR0330 based cameras) and got it working perfectly for weeks and then later, after trying higher quality caps, for months at a time. The last file would always be saved and in fact, the super-capacitors will regularly power the camera for eight seconds after power is shut to the device. Unfortunately, for some unexplained reason, eventually the camera started spitting out corrupt files on an intermittent basis. Oddly enough, some corrupt random files appear on the SD card yet sometimes the camera will still save the last file.
It appears that the super-capacitors will also require voltage balancing resistors along with the appropriate firmware to function properly in the long term. For some reason, even if you can get this working as I did, the capacitors will eventually fail because they become stressed when used in a camera not designed for it. At least that's my guess at this point.
So, anyone who wants to try this should do so at your own risk. If all else fails you can always go back and install another battery.
I don't regret this experiment for a minute. I had endless hours of fun doing it and learned a great deal and the camera is still in occasional use. Don't be afraid to try things like this even if it doesn't work in the end.
Also, the idea of installing larger capacitors and batteries outside a typical camera housing is something that I'm very pleased I came up with and plan to do elsewhere in the future, so the project gave me something to take forward. (I guess it was a textbook example of
outside the box thinking....literally!
)