[CanadaJack]

Just wondering if any of you guys have used the Browning battery pacs. Comments?

[snakelk]

I've used one and it worked well, for a year or so. I had it attached to an old BTC-2 Recon Force. Although I can see no visible damage to the unit or the power cord or connectors, none of my Browning cameras recognize the battery pack. I'm tempted to buy another.

[CanadaJack]

I'm gonna give some a try this summer on a variety of my cameras. Will post a report.

[Anthony]

I finally deployed my "Solar Power Station" yesterday on my Ridgetec Mountaineer 4G LTE cellular camera.

Inside the box is a solar power regulator and a 12v 10AH battery. I can run this with or without the solar panel. The solar panel is capable of 14A according to its specs. It produces up to 24v I believe. The regulator converts the solar input to 12v and charges the battery. It also provides overcharge protection and discharge protection.

Im using an unused speaker stand with tri-pod legs. the center of gravity is faily low and I hope it can handle wind. Likely to finish this out I should add some holes in the tips of the feet where I can drive a spike down thru into the dirt just in case of strong winds.

I am hoping this setup will give me permanent power year round. No more AA's.

[reaperman]

Boy Anthony, that setup almost looks military.

[Anthony]

I wish I had a way of telling the server the battery level of my SLA... the camera thinks its battery is 100% of course... A future nice feature would be tight integration between solar power station and camera to tell you the charge/discharge rate of the battery and amp hours left on the battery etc.... Right now I am just guessing at this not really sure whether the sun over comes or matches the camera draw in amps...

[speed2spare]

Very nice set up Anthony!! If it is all working as it should. You should never have to worry about power.

How long would you guess your camera system would run on just the 12V 10ah battery with no solar?

I am no solar expert but have played with it enough that I don't your panel is anywhere near big enough to pull 14A. 4-5ah would be my guess. Even at that though, my guess is with only 2-hours of good sun a week would keep your battery topped off. Unless those cameras use some serious power.

I added external power to one of those $25 Walmart cameras. Did is homebrew style. Drilled a hole up through the AA holder that pops and and ran an 18-2 piece of lamp cord in and soldered it to the battery contacts. Put female solderless ends on the other and and hooked it to a 6v 4.5ah SLA. I am guessing one battery swap a year should get the 5 months or so a year I run cameras.

[csb]

Nice looking setup. Who did you contract to haul the equipment to the Job site?

[Anthony]

I am confident that without remote control on (a high power state where the camera accepts sms command to wake) just the battery alone would run it for 3 to 4 months depending on activity.

So if the panel allowed me to go 6 months before a charge it still will be nice.

Actually I carried it and stand and all weigh only around 30lbs.

[Anthony]

We had a big front with high winds gusts to 30mph and my solar panel stand did not turn over which I was happy for. I was worried it would become a sail and topple over.

[bowhtr1]

I have two of the browning battery packs on my extreme cams and they work great. I bought one of these a few years ago and used it on another model and it still works on the new one. I just wish you could tell when they get low. The cams only say ext battery with no meter reading.

[CanadaJack]

Well, I've been using the 4 battery pacs for the past 5 months and they have performed very well. The only beef I have is Browning should have put a removable power cord on them. 2 of the pacs had bears bite through the cords so I had to splice them. The first one I sent Customer Service a note asking about splicing the cord and they sent me a new pac free of charge, so now I've got 5 of them. Am now using camo duct tape to cover the cord, problem solved

[Anthony]

An update on my solar set up from above:

The camera is still running at 100% battery. I started it on 4/1. It is now 10/7. All I have done is power off a couple times to swap SD card.

This set up is a bit large to tote around in the woods for sure. I have a feeling it will run year round though as it gets at least 4 hours full sun each day.