Re: Anyone know how to make a Trail Cam External Battery Pac
Gary Murray said:
4 C cells, one that takes 6 C cells and my recent one that takes 8 C cells.
Just calculating the factory battery (voltage) requirements.
Each C cell battery is 1.5 volts.
1.5 volts x
4C= 6v
6C= 9v
8C= 12v
I would be very concerned about converting the first two you mentioned over to a 12v battery because they probably would fry the electronics in short order. At least without some type of voltage step down between the battery and the camera.
And since DC doesn't step down through a transformer the way AC current does, the only way to accomplish that is convert the DC to AC and step it down, and then convert it back to DC after the fact. While entirely possibly to do, it would be pretty cost prohibitive to do it for something like a camera. Not to mention a lot of parts and likely a homemade circuit board.
when I was learning how to calculate voltage requirements when I was going to electrical school, they only allowed a 1% difference in voltage.
So a 6v power supply could only deviate .6 volts to be within spec (not much more than a half of a volt) and a 12v would be alright either 1.2 volts more or 1.2 volts less than 12.0 volts exactly (why raw car batteries are often in the low 13v range).
But throwing double the voltage on the camera's that aren't designed around 12v, probably would not end well in the long run.
What I did on my camera that took 4C batteries, I started using a 6v rechargable lantern battery. Lantern batteries are still the required 6v I need for that specific camera, but have considerably more amperage (life) and why they last so much longer between charges.
