Help please! Camera battery ?

[Polar Bear]

Going to Mille Lacs for a 3 day weekend with my OVS 500. My battery is good for about a day or so. Staying on the ice so I have no way to charge it.

Can I just hook up a regular 12 volt car battery or is the amperage too hot for the camera? I also own one of those "jumper packs" used to jump dead car batteries, could I use that hooked directly to the wire leads? It would be handier than a car battery. Thanks for your help.

[hanson1287]

Polar bear,

I highly recommend not using the car battery or the jumper cables. What you could do tho is if you have the same jumper pack that I do it has the cigarette lighter port on it. The company that makes your camera should have an adapter of this type for your camera. Check the web site and you may be able to find it. I know that aqua-vu sells them for $14 on their site. Well good luck to ya and have a fun trip

[marine_man]

Quote:

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Polar bear,

I highly recommend not using the car battery or the jumper cables.

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Why not? 12 Volts is 12 Volts... I wouldn't recommend clipping the jumper clips from the battery pack onto the camera directly - to great of a chance for shorting something out if they accidentally connect.

What I have seen at Fleet Farm, etc is a cigarette lighter plug with some wire that you could connect to the camera directly... I would recommend putting an in-line fuse in it to be safe, unless there is one built into the plug in...

marine_man

[Surface Tension]

Any 12 volt battery will work. Put an in-line fuse in like what was suggested.

[maj330]

Look at your charger and see how many amps it puts out. Car batteries put out a lot of amps that will definitely fry your camera. Putting the correct fuse in line will limit the current to the right amount and not fry your camera.

[marine_man]

Cars draw a lot of amps, hence the high amp hour rating on car batteries... but they do not put out a lot of amps... The amperage rating on the charger is simply a measure of how quickly the charger is putting power back into the battery.

There are plenty of people who wire their vexilar / aqua vue, etc directly to their 12 V batteries in their house to keep from having to charge multiple batteries that don't have a problem...

I would still reccomend the inline fuse though...

marine_man

[Guest]

Marine man has it right. 12V is 12V.

I wouldnt hook it up to jumper cables either.. too much of a chance for a short if the positive clamp bumped anything.

If its in your budget, I would recommend picking up a larger Gel Cell battery for applications like this. I have a 37.5 Ah gel cell (standard flasher has 7Ah) that I use for my electronics, and lights that will last for days without a problem. I have no doubt it would power your camera for a long weekend. Its pretty small(motorcycle battery size), weighs about 20 pounds.

Check with batteries plus or some place that carries lots of batteries. A battery like that will cost around $60.

If your in the metro, you can borrow mine for the weekend.

fisherdave(at)mn((Contact US Regarding This Word))rr((Contact US Regarding This Word))c0m

[YukonDew]

12 Volts IS 12 Volts and your car battery would work fine.

Demand and voltage are not the same.

The advantage to a car battery is that is has capacity to put out more amps if you require higher demand. It also will have capacity to run a device that draws few amps for a long period of time. - your camera will only draw the amps from the battery it needs to operate normally. The purpose of the in line fuse is to protect your battery in the event that something shorts out and the battery tries to dispatch it's positive charge into something else, like a lake, or worse - back into the negative side of the battery through a short in the camera - in which case the fuse protects the battery AND the camera. - ( It would also protect your nose from the smell of burning camera plastic and the tears that would soon follow)

Think about it this way - the light in your glove box is connected to the same battery that your starter is connected. Both use 12 volts, but if demand was determined by simply completing a circuit, and not the requirements of the device, then opening your glove box would blow a fuse or cook a light bulb every time. You would also need to run 4 gage wire to every circuit in your car.

[Polar Bear]

With your help I got it figured out. I found I had a cigarette lighter plug in with the right co-ax plug on the other end to fit the charging port of the camera. Thanks for the tip Hanson.

Thanks to everybody else who responded, especially THAT GUY who offerd the use of his battery for the weekend. You guys are the best.