Leisure battery

[Keiran]

Hello all,

today, I went and bought myself a 105aH LB, £80 new

This is going to be used to power my HEQ5, an ASUS Eee netbook, and a QHY5 when i get it...

My question to you is, how do i connect these?

I have a set of croc clips with a female ciggy, black to black, red to red, I pluged my TomTom charger in to this and SMOKE is what i got

What am I doing Wrong?

Thank you for you help...

Keiran

[MarkF]

It is a 12v battery isn't it?

Where was the smoke coming from?

[Keiran]

the Tomtom charger and the ciggy female bit

Yea it is 12v

[ollypenrice]

Reversed polarity. Ouch.

Olly

[MarkF]

No reason why it should smoke, its no different to plugging into your car's 12v battery. I did a bit of a search on pocketgpsworld and there is a Voltage regulator in the charger to knock the power from 12v to 5v, there are a few reports of faulty chargers smoking whilst people are driving .

I am no electronics expert but I reckon your voltage reg has gone and allowed 12v through, was the Tom Tom plugged in and does it still work?

[Beyond_Vision]

As you said it should be red croc clip to + terminal and black croc clip to -ve. I would check the polarity of the cable is wired correctly with the centre connection on the cigarette lighter socket being positive. It is also possible for the connection to overheat but only if it is not pushed home fully and a heavy load is attached (i.e. the connection is resistive due to it being a poor contact)

Regards

Kevin

[Keiran]

Okay I will check the polarity of the croc clips when i get home in the moring, the tomtom wasnt plugged in, i pluged the charger in first, about to plug the tomtom in ans noticed the smoke. the charger has worked perfectly before now.

But I have got it right, and i shouldnt need anything between the croc clips and the battery, and between the cigar female and cigar male?

Thanks all

[beamish]

Re power pack, this might help

http://stargazerslounge.com/diy-astronomer/73621-diy-power-station.html

[Keiran]

Hmmm. thats an idea.... I like, but the 110Ah bat is very heavy!

[beamish]

more reason to find a way of moving it about

[MarkF]

I don't think you should have anything in line, perhaps a fuse which is what protects the socket in your car. I wired a socket up on my motorcycle a few years back to run a garmin GPS on the handle bars, I did put an inline fuse in which was recommended by someone somewhere, it was a while ago.

[danielhenry31]

Its not different from connecting to the 12V battery in your car. I have a bit of research on pocket gps world and there is a voltage regulator in the charger to power 12V and 5V, there are few reports of errors smoking chargers, while people are running.