Battery question

[wackychimp]

EDIT: New question... see below

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Ok it's probably very obvious that I'm not an electronics expert, but I'll ask my question anyway.

Is there a battery that takes a "regular" 120V plug? I've found AC adapters that you can hook to a car battery that provide you with one or two household plugs, but I'm looking for a battery the size of a laptop battery that can connect to a regular household 2 prong plug (called a 120V plug right?).

The thing I want to plug in has a small power draw and I'd only need to get 2-3 hours out of the battery before recharging.

I'm just not having any luck on google and I think it's because I'm not using the right terminology. :confused


Anyone know of such a thing?

 

[Reaper57]

the only way to get 120 v from a battery would be DC like your car and it would be BIG.

to get 120 v AC like in your house you would have to use an inverter to change the DC to AC.

AC to DC is sinple to do by useing a small rectifier.

john :cool

 

[wackychimp]

Hmmmmmmmm... maybe I need to approach this from a different angle.

Anybody got ideas on how to power this via portable battery:

http://www.neurosaudio.com/store/product.a...rchcat=products


It's a small video recorder/converter & I can't imagine that it draws that much power. But it only has a household plug for power.

 

[acerocket]

Well first you need a battery to power it. Best bet is a good quality deep cycle battery. You will also need a trickle charger for it and wiring. Don't know how much you want to spend the larger amphour rating the longer it will supply power. I have a telescope that uses a 33 AH power pack that I got from here: www.kendrick-ai.com. The big boy is not cheap (couple a hundred bucks, and it comes with a charger and a cool carrying bag) but I can charge it up before I leave and use it solidly for two nights and still have plenty of charge left. Alternatively, any marine type deep cycle battery should work. Next, you will need a converter. I checked the specs for your recorder but it doesn't give an amperage or wattage rating. On the cheap end, you can get this 25W converter: 25W. But I suspect the recorder takes a lot more than 25W. Here is a 150 watt converter: 150W, and a 400 watt unit: 400W. You may need to get the recorder first and back figure to size the converter correctly.If it gives the wattage then size accordingly, if not, Voltage * Amperage = Wattage (ie 120V * 3 amp = 360 watts). Pick a wattage about 5% higher than you will need (ie you need 50 watts, pick at least a 52.5 watt converter). You can probably find something on the last two links given if you need higher than 400 watts.

Hope this helps.

 

[Great_Bizarro]

After looking at the product, what you need is sample the video you need to your pc then upload them to the item you want to play them on or just burn to dvd and play on a portable dvd player. Any video played on a screen smaller than say 7"dia is not going to be worth watching anyway in my opinion.

 

[wackychimp]

Thanks for the thoughts... I keep leaving out important details :rolleyes

I'd prefer that the battery be small enough to wearable - which is why I was looking for a laptop size battery.

Any thoughts in that direction or is this just too complex for what I'm trying to accomplish?

 

[acerocket]

<div class='quotetop'>(wackychimp @ Sep 18 2006, 09:55 AM) [snapback]1322181[/snapback]</div>

Thanks for the thoughts... I keep leaving out important details :rolleyes

I'd prefer that the battery be small enough to wearable - which is why I was looking for a laptop size battery.

Any thoughts in that direction or is this just too complex for what I'm trying to accomplish?
[/b]

Nothing is too complex if you have enough money. There are some battery packs here: battery space. You can try the Ni-MH fanny pack like this one: fanny back. Or if you are really into torture, a Li-ion pack like this: Li-ion. You would still need to have the battery pack attached to a converter in order to run an AC device like the recorder. I would imagine with a little custom tailoring, you could build a belt of something to hold both of these items. I don't guarantee that a setup like this will work as I only have experience with the larger deep cycle packs.


Here is something that might work. 12V pack and this converter: converter. It looks like the battery pack has a female cigarette lighter charge/discharge plug. So you could just plug the converter in and plug your recorder into the converter.

 

[MusicTrooper]

.
.
ok, here is my guess, as I just got a crazy idea for myself for this,

Is there a

UPS power backup device,

that could work?

Ed

 

[eltee]

There is a place that makes really high quality secondary batteries for laptops, portable DVD's, etc. I have one for my portable DVD and it is smaller and lasts 3x longer than the original.

It is www.batterygeek.net

 

[Vaderman]

I would say a UPS is the way to go. It's already a battery and made to run a 120 device for a limited time. Thyey are HEAVY but usually because of lead acid batteries inside. Try looking for one with a lithium Ion battery and you should be good to go. Try a battery store too, they may have a replacement battery for a UPS you can buy at an electronics shop. I have seen some smaller ones, it then depends on how much juice your little recorder needs and how long you need it to run.
You might want to look into other digital recorders as well. Since you aren't polaying back hi-res, there may be small digital recorders that will do the trick for you. I have seen one that's about $99 sold as a portable video camera and it is probably recording to a standard memory card of some type.