Topic: sla battery test results

[peeeper]

I did some battery life testing before heading out to HSMF.  I have four Sealed Lead Acid batteries rated at 12 volt 7 Amp hours each, which I wired two of each in parallel.  This gives me two battery packs at a rating of 12 volts 14Ah.  For my testing I used my rig; skm184 > mme > vaio srx87p (384MB ram, 40GB 72000rpm).  My intentions was to get a very good idea how long I can roll on one of the battery packs and how long it would take to recharge it.  I ran the test three times and averaged about seven and a half hours to eight hours of battery life.  This was with constant recording to the vaio and using the phantom power of the mme to power the mics.  Also note that the screen brightness on the vaio was kept at its lowest level and kept turned on during the whole testing period.  The mme was powered directly to the SLA at 12V and the vaio was powered by connecting a DC/DC converter in between the vaio and battery pack.  The DC/DC converter changes the 12V to the required 16V to power the vaio.  Charging was done by a 12V 1A charger which took roughly the same amount of time to recharge it as it did to drain it (7.5 - 8 hours).  All and all this gives me juice for about 15.5 hours of continuous recording.

I'm planning on using the vaio on some but not all the bands we want to see out there, about three bands a day with the vaio.  For rest of the bands we will see, I'll just use my D8 under its own power (AA).  I'm looking at using one of the battery packs per day and having the other charge back at the RV.  Let’s hope I have enough juice.

[F.O.Bean]

thats a lot of music, but like you, i seem obsessive about power and have almost as much as humanly needed!!

in a weekend at least

[keepongoin]

i am hoping to have a similar system for the northwest string summit.

i have 7.2 and 12 Ah SLAs to power my JB3s.
i have 7 x 3 amp hour NiMH 9.6v and 2 x 1.6 Ah NiMH to power a ps-2 and an AD-20.

i bought a solar trickle charger for the 12 volts that should be able to charge the small one while i am using the large one.  Hopefully some RVers will be kind enough to let me plug in at night.

[AT853rxwh]

i am hoping to have a similar system for the northwest string summit.

i have 7.2 and 12 Ah SLAs to power my JB3s.
i have 7 x 3 amp hour NiMH 9.6v and 2 x 1.6 Ah NiMH to power a ps-2 and an AD-20.

i bought a solar trickle charger for the 12 volts that should be able to charge the small one while i am using the large one.  Hopefully some RVers will be kind enough to let me plug in at night.

That solar trickle charger isn't going to do much I would think... it prolly puts out between 10 - 100 mah at most... So it would take between 70 and 700 hours for the small battery to charge, and between 120 and 1200 hrs for the big one...


My suggestion, return the charger, buy another battery...

[keepongoin]

Thanks.  I think i will try it out to see how it does.  At 25 bucks, i can use it to charge my cell phone or something.