Maplin have special offer on power supply

[jnc71106]

i use a dell 12v charger with cigar type plug once the battery gets low i plug it in and remove the battery from the laptop so that i'm only powering the laptop and not charging at the same time as i believe this is a inefficient way of using the power could be wrong but i remember reading it somewhere

[cantharis]

My setup uses 8-9ah so I'd not get even 1 hours worth of power from this pack and I consider my setup a fairly normal imaging rig

Mount + 2 Dew tapes + Dew Controller + Imaging Camera + Laptop Power

I think it's safe to say the battery isn't really 9ah and that using it in the cold reduces the efficiency as well. Plus the voltage drop as the battery power gets lower means the mount might not be getting enough juice so will struggle with tracking

I think you mean to say that your gear takes a current of 8-9 A. So a 7 A-hr battery will last for less than 1 hour. Fair enough comment. My Maplin has a capacity of 17A-hr so serves my purposes a lot longer.

[SnakeyJ]

Jake,

Cheers for the info on this - I'll look out for a 12V charger for my Thinkpad, this at least saves trying to modify a direct connection.

Thanks also Cantharis - I didn't manage halfords today, but will try again tomorrow and see if the offer extends to any bigger units.

[ilove1995]

Worth mentioning that the cigarette lighter insert recently broke when I was plugging in the power lead for my Nexstar 4se. Really unimpressed with this though no surprise as the last couple of times that I have used this it's been looking like this was going to happen. I no longer rate this item and have since bought a far more robust one for not much more money...

[russ.will]

Indeed, on the basis of threads like these, I decided to buy a golf cart battery (and charger) off Tayna. These are deep cycle batteries of larger Ah for less than the questionable Maplin power tanks. It only takes a bit of ingenuity to string as many cigar sockets as you need off one although, ironically, you get the sockets from Maplins.

Russell

[Pig]

I've a NexStar 6 SE arriving tomorrow. This sounds the ticket. So this will work fine? Are any other accessories / cables required?

You will need a cigarette socket lead to fit your goto mount 365 asronomy do them for about a tenner.