Which battery?

[michaelmorris]

Sadly I've no longer got an observatory and my future observing is going to involve setting up my imaging rig outside away from my new house.

So, I'm going to need a battery pack capable of running an equatorial mount, two dew bands, a cooled camera, and a powered usb hub for an whole night.

Inexpensive, relatively portable suggestions please.

[Carbon Brush]

If weight is important and you have funds, and you want a solution that works safely out of the box, use a Tracer power pack.

If you want to save money then a lithium battery car jump start can be good. You need to arrange your own (low cost) fusing and connectors. If you have the skills this is a very affordable method.

Lithium is typically 1/3 the power to weight ratio of lead acid and has good current delivery for power hungry dew bands.

Hope this helps, David.

[nightfisher]

I would be thinking a car battery, maybe rig up some kind of carry strap to make it easy to move about, but i favour rc plane lipo`s as i already have all the charging gear, though these days all i power is EQ5 with twin dc motors so use an 1800mah 2s lipo with 6volt ubec, so small i velcro it to one of the legs of tripod

[DaveL59]

1 hour ago, Carbon Brush said:

If weight is important and you have funds, and you want a solution that works safely out of the box, use a Tracer power pack.

If you want to save money then a lithium battery car jump start can be good. You need to arrange your own (low cost) fusing and connectors. If you have the skills this is a very affordable method.

Lithium is typically 1/3 the power to weight ratio of lead acid and has good current delivery for power hungry dew bands.

Hope this helps, David.

Be sure to check the output voltage if you opt for the LiPo car jumpstart type packs, the one I recently bought was 16v which is a bit high for the SynScan on my EQ5. Easily solved with a suitable buck converter between the pack and the scope tho and hopefully will be a good easily portable solution at low cost. I've no dew heaters (yet) so can't say how these would affect runtimes. I'd posted about this one on another thread here.

Alternatively, if you can stretch then a LiFePo battery would give good capacity options at much lighter/smaller size than equiv lead batteries, in theory can be a direct drop-in replacement in some UPS. you can go lower mAH on these than for lead as they run more consistently with less volt drop as they drain, so 10Ah LiFePo vs 17Ah for lead, say.

Car batteries, well just don't drain them much below 50% charge if you want them to last, and keep it charged or again life will shorten. Lead batteries do need more "maintenance" in this regard vs other types.