Help needed on a portable power pack to maintain a laptop and HEQ5 Pro?

[Ryan_86]

Hi all, I am in thr middle of assembling my out in the field set up. I will be using a Sony Vaio laptop (19.5v), HEQ5 Pro and a guide cam. I have a seprate 17ah Sky Watcher power tank for two dew straps.

I will be doing all my imaging out in the field, so i need a reliable high powered battery that will maintain power (particulary for my laptop). I jave read some power packs are u able to maintain power whilst the laptop is on.

If anynody has experience and able to advise me on a tried and tested battery, it would be hugely appreciated???

Thanks

Ryan

[MarsG76]

I ran a VAIO from a 12V car adapter for VAIO laptops from a 900A Car starter battery and it ran fine for quite a while... perhaps get another 17Ah pack for your laptop and mount.

 

[Ryan_86]

Hi pal, thanks for your reply??

A 12v car adapter sound good, they range anywhere between £7 to £50. What price was yours?

Cheers

[solwisesteve]

If you mean those charger booster things from 'the bay' that are about the size of a smartphone then please note these are NOT as described. When they say those ridiculous Ah figures they are NOT at 12V. We (the company I work for) sampled a few for use as compact battery packs for trackers. The specs seem to infer it would run for a couple of months on one charge. In practice in ran for about 3 days before running out of juice. We tried 3 different models from different suppliers and they were all the same i.e. the specs were grossly out. We then took one apart to try and find out why the specs were wrong. It looks like they are really quoting the 20K mAh (or similar) based upon the voltage of each cell i.e. at the individual cell voltage not 12V. As such the specs are about 4 times inflated. tbh it was someone else in the company that did the work so I'm not 100% sure of the details but the gist of the matter is the specs are very misleading. As it happens, even with the specs being so far out, they probably still have enough oomph to start a car but that's high current for only a few seconds.

It might be that MarsG76 is referring to a proper 'handbag' style jump starter pack and they ARE what they say. This is because the current is quoted at the proper 12V.

Sorry if I've veered into 'grandmother sucking eggs' mode :-)