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External Battey
Posted by TXSurveyor on August 6, 2016 at 5:12 pmcurious about everyone’s suggestion for an external Battey for base/rover set up
richard-imrie replied 8 years, 2 months ago 7 Members · 9 Replies -
9 Replies
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If you’re driving a 35-watt radio, a deep-cycle marine battery is the way to go. I use a 55-watt Optima, and am happy with its performance.
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So far, the BEST battery purchase I have ever made was a ODYSSEY.
http://www.odysseybattery.com/
I bought one about 10+ yrs ago. Ran it on the base for 3 yrs. It seemed to get weaker, after a long day, at 35 watts, and running the base radio, and the fence charger. So, I retired it, and used it on my trailer, as a winch power source.
Then, last yr, my van needed a new battery, but it needed it right then.. so I put the Odyssey on it. Been running strong for a year. Left the INSIDE lights on all night the other night. Still started the engine. It is about a 1200 CCA battery. It cost over $ 200.Having said all that, My latest base battery is a 50 AH SLA battery.
I think this is the same One: http://www.ebay.com/itm/12v-50Ah-Threaded-AGM-VRLA-SLA-Sealed-Lead-Acid-Battery-150W-/141206982138?hash=item20e0978dfa:g:K0MAAOSwl9BWIaMz
I added the flat connectors. And, it came with a little fiber strap handle.
So far, it is great.The logic for this is that the RTK manufacturers sell SLA batteries, standard.
I figure that if they consider the SLA (Sealed Lead Acid) to be optimal, for this service type, then I’d just buy one directly, and of a much larger size. I don’t think I have ever run mine down below 70% charge yet.I hope this helps.
Nate
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I used an Orange Optima for over a decade, and then a Yellow Optima until I sold it to another surveyor (who is still using it).
Loyal
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I second the Optima. Several of the manufacturers have their own external batteries. I like the external Trimble and Leica battery, generic though, go with the optima.
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we use a battery like this, http://www.interstatebatteries.com/b/sealed-lead-acid-sla/11-0-13-0-volts/N-18Zzihwq2Z1yec9b4Zzihwsq?dsNav=A~Part+Number&1=1 and get many years out of it, if and only if, we use a really good charger. According to the battery rep, a good charger can increase battery life by 100%. We use a multi stage charger, that goes from fast charge to a milli amp trickle float charge, and we can see the difference in battery life. A warning, these batteries weigh a crapton!
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Because of the problems of getting deep cycle AGM batteries where I work, we have revered to the smallest wet lead acid car battery that we can buy here, both for our 4 watt RTK base/radio and for robotic total stations. We used to use the small 7Ah AGM UPS computer batteries and later went to a bigger 18Ah, all “topped-up” with solar panel/controller during operation. But these gave continuous problems and I think it was mainly because the “pulsing” of the radio of the RTK base unit, and the action of the robotic total stations, dipped the battery voltage below the internal low voltage cut-off limits of both types of instrument. The solar controllers also have a low-voltage cut off, so that added to the chance of a shut down. So now we just use the car battery without solar, and make sure we mains-power-charge it overnight. The main issue with the car battery is it tipping over in transit and spilling acid.
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Richard Imrie, post: 384863, member: 11256 wrote: dipped the battery voltage below the internal low voltage cut-off limits of both types of instrument.
Did you ever find trouble with your solar charger giving troubles to the low voltage limits? I had a solar charger I thought I could use to help keep the battery going, but turned out, the charger pulsed, and triggered the (I guess) low voltage limits, and ruined my plans.
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Yes, that was another of the issues. Where I normally work in the west of Fiji it is “always sunny” and for a long time (months) we had no issues with the car-battery/solar+controller combination but last week we were running a robotic total station in the east where it is “always cloudy” (or raining) and with that combo the total station on board battery monitor always showed empty and it kept shutting down due to low battery on the instrument, so we ended up removing the solar+controller and running on the car-battery only – instrument then shows battery half full, and no shut down thereafter. There’s lots of variables – connection quality, wire size … so my experience (not being electrical trained) is to keep it relatively big, and simple. On another thread on this forum, I got the impression in a discussion relating to Trimble “cowbells” that adding another higher voltage small capacity battery to trick the voltage to staying above the cut-off limits is a solution. And also constant voltage regulators (which I use in some other cases).
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