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My Portable power


msinclairinork

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Hello all,

Just thought I would share my little power soloution. I know its nothing new nor is it complicated to do (about 10mins of work) but i'm still proud of it.

It is a 75amp/hr lessure battery (£50)

240v 300w Inverter (£20)

3 stage charger (£15)

an ebay car voltage meter (£3! new)

and a 2x car 12v output. (£7)

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Total £95

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This is mainly to run my laptop in the field, but I will probably run everything else of it too once i get the cables. e.g camera & mount.

According to my calculations I should manage to run my lappy on its own for around 6+/- hours that is taking into acount a good bit of voltage drop throughout the system i.e the inverter etc. So that should suffice nicley. I am testing it as i type :)

Going to build a nice box for it all to sit in and have the connections and meter reading flush on the outside and i might aswell insulate the box with some glassfiber out of the attic :o

Will post pics soon with that.

Thanks for looking :headbang:

Michael

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What's the output voltage of the laptop power supply? If it's 12V or less you wouldn't need to use the inverter up to 240V and then back down, which is a lot less efficient.

Just a thought .. ;-) Otherwise a very nice idea. ;-)

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I use 2 x 20Ah gel cells, one for the mount and the other for the "extras" The batteries usually outlast me during an observing session!!

I then put them on the triple stage charger- then (weather permitting!) they are back in action the next morning for solar imaging.

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Sounds spot on Ken.

Well after a good testing I managed to get about 5 and a half hours out of the batt, but i will also get an additional 1hr out of the laptop battery too.

Don't know how well this will fair in a cold winters night but as you say Ken it will no doubt out do me :o

Cheers,

Michael

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Don't use the Power Inverter to power the laptop, there is to much power loss in the conversion.

I have a 110Ahr battery all built into a portable plywood box and I also have many different output connections available:-

2 x 12v via Car Aux socket

1 x 12V Crox clips

1 x 240Vac 150w Inverter.

1 X DC Power Adaptor ( Trust.com - Notebook Power Adapter Car - Plane PW-1200p)

Using the power adaptor is easy and gives me many many hours of laptop usage compared to the inverter.

A wise electronics guy told me this a few years back.

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