OBSY Multiple power supply options

[Mukv]

Greetings

I'm on the way to finishing a portable power supply and just wanted to share the three options I use for my obsy:

this little 20w solar panel keeps my packs topped up ready to go.

my power source in the obsy

current diy power pack

I will be adding a fuse box and variable power output , later today a set of 2x 12v and 2x 5v outputs where the terminal connectors are placed at the moment

the diy pack is made up of 4x 7Ah SLA in parallel to supply enough current for 2x dew heaters and a laptop ( XPS M1710 ) as well as the NEQ6, the RAC portable power pack is 17Ah and can be added if I use a second laptop for processing images during a session out on dark site.

In the obsy I use a 7Amp 12v power supply to power everything but a laptop as I'm in the house on my desktop PC.

What do use use?

Andy

[DIYASTRO]

Andy,

That is looking very tidy!

I too am at the stage of thinking of power requirements for an obsy.

I am also going down the same route as you have with solar panels to 'top up' batts.

the only problem that I see with you config is the 4 7Ah batts in parallel. I am sure that I have read somewhere that gel batts don't like being charged in this type of configuration, I think I read this in some marine blog when I was looking into what type of batteries they use. I will try and find the link but perhaps it may be worth googling this just to see if the parallel charging is ok. I know that the old lead acid batts behaved quite well configured in this way but I am sure that with sealed cells some problem occurs with not all cells charging at the same rate or efficiency.

Kind regards

Boyd