Portable Power Supply

Dave - does that come with cigarette lighter connecters or can they be added easily. Also, how much? And are they easy to get? And what rating are they?

Soiunds like a plan - I could stick it in the shed and run some cables.

Cheers

Dave McD

Dave,
They dont come with cigerette lighter sockets in them as they are mainly meant as computer power backups in the case of a power outage.
My own UPS is pretty small and has an 525 VA rating, this means it'll last a good while before it starts to fade, but they are more expensive then the 12v supplies.

They come with a serial or USB port dso you can plug them into your PC and see how much power/time they have left.

Is that 525.0 a/h? That's wopping! I've seen marine batteries with 110 a/h... but 525 :shock: 10a/h minimum is what I need for the mount but I guess when you add in a foucuser, dewheater and CCD, I'll need a lot more. Also, it'd be nice to keep the laptop trickle charging too.

Do you think it'll be easy do do some wiring that will connect the UPS to a mount with a cigarette lighter socket?

Also, how transportable is it? And is it easy enough to recharge?

So many questions....

Cheers
Dave McD

Dave,
unfortunately its not 525 amp hours, remember this thing pumps out 240ac volts, so it would be equivilant to one of those battery packs just that it gives you mains and has connections similar to ones you see on the back of a PC.

To put it in perspective, it would be able to power a desktop PC for 15-30 minutes and they draw over 400 watts (remember the monitor is another 400 watts), my scope draws 18watts, so you could run the scope for ~24hours or so before it starts to fade, it starts blinking when it does.

This is a very very rough approximation, I've never actually run the PC from it for any length of time, but it would be an interesting test, but I've run the scope+dew heater from it for hours without problems.

I've rigged up a 4 way splitter extension cable from it, so I can plug in normal 3 pin mains plugs.

As for the 12v adapter, you can get one in any hardware shop for 15-25 euros, you can get variable ones also. I got one for the ETX70, no more batteries

I dont understand the logic of using a UPS unless you are powering a regular PC.

UPS's generally have lead batteries in them, which operate at 12V DC. The UPS then converts this up to 230V AC for regular appliances.

But scopes and laptops typically operate at around 12V, so you are wasting a lot of energy converting from 12 to 230V AC to 12 DC again.

Am I missing something?

Cheers,
~Al

Albert,
The classic lx200 runs on 18 volts and I wanted it keep the laptop running for that big longer, so thats where I was coming from.
The canon runs at something like 9.7 volts and the laptop is 20volts.
The etx 70 is 9 volts.

I'm in the long process of building an observatory, so it'll be in there to run the system in the event of a power outage.
Only 2 weeks ago, a good portion of the city lost power on saturday night and the sky here was the best I've seen it in a long time.

UPS is not the be all and end all, it just suits what I do.