Batteries.

Just to let those know, who might be looking for batteries to drive their scopes and/or accesories.

I just recieved a 12v 20ah (6kg 181mm x 167mm x 76mm) VRLA(Gell Cell Deep Cycle) battery from this crowd in Glasnevin (They deliver for €10)

www.europower.ie

Battery was about €70 and charger about €60

Have to say I was expecting to pay a lot more.

They have a large range of batteries of all different types and capacities. I went with this particular one due to weight and size limitations imposed by mounting it to my Lightbridge base. Its close to my power requirement threshold assuming I was fighting off dew for the whole session but should last me a full dewy observing session where I'd probably drain it to about 30%. Apparently 20% is the point beyond which you shouldn't drain this type of battery.

As a side note. I also received my Dewbuster Dew controller and all my dew strips. All 8 of them!! Secondary, EP, Finder Objective, Finder EP, GLP (great idea Jeff Young!), Intelliscope Controller handset + 2x 2" strips for heating an enclosed scope mounted EP rack. I should never have to worry about dew again. You can see why I need the 20ah battery!!

The great thing about the dewbuster though is that Ron Keating will configure it to your requirements. I have 8x 40% power jacks to drive all the non mirror dewstrips, 1x temp sensor controlled jack for the secondary heater, 1x 3v jack to power my GLP and 4x 12v jacks to power the JMI TNT(Train and Track) scope tangent drive system, PC Fan speed controller driving 5 fans and.........

.......eh........my scope mounted Kight Rider LED bar!

So in effect the Dewbuster is a Dew Controller AND power distribution block in one!

20Ah is a little low for that price?, the one I use is a 120AH battery and I payed 3 times what you did. You can never have too much power.
You gotta put up a pic of the knight rider bar :laugh:

Well like I said I am constrained by what my base will accomodate. Powered groundboard turned out not to be an option. The prices didn't scale with the capacity. The higher capacities I priced before I remembered my size limitations weren't that much more expensive than this lowly 20ah.

If you want to see the knightrider bar, have a look here:

www.litewave.co.uk/iceled_scanner.asp

Click the video but turn your volume down unless you like Happy Hardcore dance music(noise )
Also ignore the light on the ground in front of the car, thats not reflection from the knightrider bar but lights mounted under the front of the car. The knightrider bar is mounted behind the grille.

I'll be leaving it scanning on Red needless to say but I do have the option of changing the 80's TV show scope theme and turning the scope into a BattleStar Galactica cylon with the dual scan mode Now if only I could find some hitech paint that at the flick of a switch would change the scope from gloss black to Chrome!

Also it goes without saying that this LED scanner will only be switched on for outreach in an overlit location or at the begining of a dark sky session to give everyone a laugh before we get dark adapted

Also it goes without saying that this LED scanner will only be switched on for outreach in an overlit location or at the begining of a dark sky session to give everyone a laugh before we get dark adapted

Your mad - you are:silly: : blink:

Calibos wrote:

If you want to see the knightrider bar, have a look here:

www.litewave.co.uk/iceled_scanner.asp

oh man! that's awesome !
anyway of getting a bunch of them and having them run along your truss poles :silly:

I wonder if they do a Cylon version:)