Connecting a battery the wrong way round?

[AD-15]

hello,

I recently purchased a (expensive) CR2025 battery for my camera's wireless controller. When I first fitted the battery, I did it the wrong way around (positive facing 'out' rather than 'in). I don't know how I managed to do that, it just seemed to click into place better than what I now realise to be the correct way.

I have tried fitting it the correct way, but I now get no results. Either the receivers on my camera are not working, or my remote is no longer working, or I somehow damaged the battery. I sincerely hope it is the latter.

Can any damage arise from connecting a battery's terminals the wrong way round? This is also considering the fact that everything is on a small scale, we're not talking about car batteries.

Thanks!

[Funkstar]

the CR2025 shouldnæt cause any problems when fitted the wrong war round..... usually.

It depends on your the contacts are configured. There should be a contact on the bottom and one on the side. when fitted incorrectly the contacts are both touching the same piece on metal so there is no circuit and can't cause any problems.

This is of course assuming that is how the holder was designed.

[adam_weisshaupt]

as far as i know you cannot cause damage to devices by connecting batteries the wrong way around - the result is simply no power [while batteries are still connected the wrong way].

[TheAnimus]

Originally Posted by adam_weisshaupt

as far as i know you cannot cause damage to devices by connecting batteries the wrong way around - the result is simply no power [while batteries are still connected the wrong way].

our survey says, ech uh. (X)

there are many types of battery holding device on the market which don't provide this, not all touch the side, many will short the battery out if put the wrong way round (this will ruine the battery). Again quality gear will not be vunerable too this.

Now, moving onto the rest of the device, normally you have a diode inside to protect against this, a diode only allows current to flow one way throu it, however this isn't always possible (voltage drops) and depending on the regulators that are present.

When making bespoke devices as sideline at uni, i simply often used a PP3, a diode (voltage drop) and a regulator (smoothing regulated form of voltage drop), to get 5V ttl. If you put the voltage the wrong way round on any standard logic chip/low end micro, you WILL fry it.

[Rave]

It's unlikely that you've harmed the device, though you may have shorted out the battery. You can get a multimeter from Maplin for a fiver (at least you could the last time I checked)- they're handy for lots of things, but I probably use mine for testing batteries more than anything else.

You can buy lithium coin batteries pretty cheaply on ebay- but I usually get them out of the little keyring lights in the pound shop, usually a pack of two keyring lights contains four CR2016s (although the red keyring lights from Poundland contain one CR2032). A 2016 can be used in any device that takes a 2025 or a 2032 with a little bit of aluminium foil as a spacer. It won't last as long obviously, but at 25p a pop who cares!