Helmet Cam... and charging voltage?

[Mile195]

So I bought a cheap helmet cam off the internet. Trouble is it only does 20 minutes on a pair of AAA batteries which is rubbish.

So I've made up a 3 volt battery pack by connecting two twin AA battery holders in parallel and soldered it to the existing battery connections. Now it runs for about 3 hours!

Because I'm lazy, I can't be ar*ed to pull out all the batteries and put them in a standard charger every night, so I want to charge it as one unit.

Do I:

A) butcher a standard battery charger which'll give me the correct voltage, but an extrodinarily long charging time (the battery pack is essentially 10000 mAh. The charger output is 280 mA for a pair of AA's, resulting in a charge time of 35 hours!!)

B) Butcher a standard battery charger, connecting the two sets of 3 volt outputs in parallel, theoretically giving me a 560 mA output, halving the charge time to 17.5 hours. (or is that not quite how it would work?)

or

C) buy a dedicated battery pack charging unit. I have found chargers rated at 4.2 volts, but I'm unclear whether this is the output voltage (which would be about right for a 3 volt setup), or whether they're designed to charge a 4.2 volt battery pack (in which case I would have thought the output would be 5.5 - 6 volts, which'll be too high).

Any thoughts anyone?

 

[Twelve Spokes]

Sorry to bump this but I just discovered 14500 batteries which are AA equivalent but at 3.7v,work great im my camera which took 2AA rechargeables.Now I use one of these and a dummy battery.Test was ok today but not sure how long it lasts.I have for my MUVI rip-off cam soldered on an 18650 battery pack which has a running time now of about ten hours,generally the 16gb card runs out first.Also the AAA equivalent which I have been looking up is 10400...they are 3.7v at about 600mah.I now find running my camera with one 3.7 AA battery instead of two AA Nimh (2.4v) means I don't see the low battery indicator.I did when using the Nimh.I've got 10x AA 3.7v batteries 2000mah and have ordered ten more.Ten of these batteries replaces 20 duracell NiMh 2000mah though need the dummy batteries though.Can see me using this when filming on the bike tour,can fall back on rechargeables or alkaline batteries if need be.I have four cameras to take anyway.

I have specialised charges for all these batteries though they don't take that long to charge.

What is your camera anyway?

The only disappointment I have is that no one has designed a bullet cam which takes a 14500 battery (removable) instead of using the crappy internal batteries.

 

[Twelve Spokes]

.

Any thoughts anyone?

My little trick with the 3.7v battery worked on one camera but didn't work on the other similar camera.

Doh it's 3.7v @ 2 amp (14500 battery) as opposed to 2.4v (approx) @ 4amp Nimh.

I've tried an 18650 battery but it just malfunctions.Also the other camera which works with the 14500 battery successfully uses more of the card for similar video file as opposed to the other camera.