6v or 12v external battery to power 6v camera?

[Roscoe]

We had a short discussion in one of the covert cell camera threads about what was best in terms of which battery to power a 6v cellular trail camera, a 6v or 12v battery of equal amp hours. I think we pretty well concluded that amp hours were amp hours and there would be little difference in battery life between the two. My electrical knowledge is limited at best, but a clever user over at Chasingame came up with the following test over the weekend. Thoughts?

I conducted an experiment using the following items:

1 new Powersonic 12 volt 9ah battery
2 new Powersonic 6 volt 4.5ah batteries wired in parallel to make a 6 volt 9ah battery
2 identical 6 volt light bulbs
2 identical voltmeters
1 Covert power cable with the built in voltage regulator to regulate 12v down to 6v
1 Code black camera set for 1 hour time lapse.

The results were as I expected, the 12 volt 9ah battery regulated down to 6 volts, lasted almost twice as long as the 6 volt 9ah battery. 6 volts went 10 hours. 12 volts regulated down to 6 volts went 19 hours.

Here's a sequence of photos ( I left out some of the redundant time lapse photos):

[BowSlayer]

That's interesting. I would have bet the 2 6 volts would have lasted longer.

[RMW]

i thought they would last about the same time. I have 2 12v 15ah sla batteries wired in parallel for my Recony cell cam which is 12v. Also a 12v solar panel. With the 12 lithiums installed this camera should last a couple years without touching it in the field

Will the covert adapter cord work with the HCO GOCAM?

[meltingfeather]

Interesting.
Why?

[Roscoe]

i thought they would last about the same time. I have 2 12v 15ah sla batteries wired in parallel for my Recony cell cam which is 12v. Also a 12v solar panel. With the 12 lithiums installed this camera should last a couple years without touching it in the field

Will the covert adapter cord work with the HCO GOCAM?

Yes.

[gonehuntin68]

Interesting.
Why?

Pretty simple really, One setup is 12v at 9ah and the other is 6v at 9ah. Since the camera is only drawing lets say 6v at .8ah that means it is only drawing .4ah at 12v on the 12v setup but on the 6v setup it is drawing .8ah at 6v.
With this said, always make sure you can hook up a 12v battery to a 6v camera because if the unit doesn't have some sort of converter you will burn up the camera with a 12v battery. It also depends on how the converter/circuit board is designed. If it just used resistors they would last about the same amount of time as all a resistor does is limit the amount of power that goes through them. In this case it would draw 12v .8ah from the battery and then when it goes through the resistor it would only let 6v at .8ah through and the other 6v would just be wasted thus the batteries would last about the same. Please note that I didn't use the correct terminologies on some of the things I mentioned above because I tried to make it so people unfamiliar with them might be able to understand.

[meltingfeather]

Please note that I didn't use the correct terminologies on some of the things I mentioned above because I tried to make it so people unfamiliar with them might be able to understand.

Makes sense, don't know why I didn't see that.
Just change your ah (amp-hours) to a (amps) and you're all good.

[gingib]

glad to hear

I have my 3 coverts setup with 12v batteries and a big solar panel. I just have $20 feeder batteries which are 8AH....if they don't last long enough I will buy 12AH batteries off Amazon

But 1 of mine has been at 9 for 3 months

[Take Dead Aim]

glad to hear

I have my 3 coverts setup with 12v batteries and a big solar panel. I just have $20 feeder batteries which are 8AH....if they don't last long enough I will buy 12AH batteries off Amazon

But 1 of mine has been at 9 for 3 months

Are you running any 2AA batteries inside camera? I am not running any interior batteries and my 12v keeps going down after 2-3 months.

[silencer2011]

Works out just like any transformer. If you step down the voltage to half the of the primary, you will double your secondary amperage, assuming we are talking about single phase stuff. Sounds like to me the 12v is the way to go.

[RMW]

Are you running any 2AA batteries inside camera? I am not running any interior batteries and my 12v keeps going down after 2-3 months.

Put you some rechargeable AA inside camera. On coverts the solar panel charges the internal batteries and external battery. On HCO and Reconyx cams the solar panel only charges the external battery.

[gingib]

Are you running any 2AA batteries inside camera? I am not running any interior batteries and my 12v keeps going down after 2-3 months.

Yes I am running 12 Rechargeable AA's in 2 of them and 12 alkalines in another to test and see how long they last.

The cheap WI panels SUCK and won't last long. You need a stronger powered 12v solar panel and it will stay charged

Put you some rechargeable AA inside camera. On coverts the solar panel charges the internal batteries and external battery. On HCO and Reconyx cams the solar panel only charges the external battery.

Where did you find this out? I thought you and someone posted weeks ago that it only charges the 12v?

[RMW]

Yes I am running 12 Rechargeable AA's in 2 of them and 12 alkalines in another to test and see how long they last.

The cheap WI panels SUCK and won't last long. You need a stronger powered 12v solar panel and it will stay charged



Where did you find this out? I thought you and someone posted weeks ago that it only charges the 12v?

I found this out on the chasing game forum. You should check it out it has a lot of good info for us trailcam addicts. Lol

[gingib]

I found this out on the chasing game forum. You should check it out it has a lot of good info for us trailcam addicts. Lol

Yes I did. Roscoe showed me the thread on the Coverts and it is very helpful and has a lot of good info.

Ok good, glad I have been doing my setup right

[Roscoe]

Put you some rechargeable AA inside camera. On coverts the solar panel charges the internal batteries and external battery. On HCO and Reconyx cams the solar panel only charges the external battery.

This correct. I spoke with the owner of HCO about this last year. I would have rather had them allow charging of internal batteries with a solar panel and place a warning sticker inside the camera to use the appropriate batteries in doing so. He decided not to allow this as he was afraid of customers using alkaline or lithiums with the solar panels and ruining cameras. I would assume Reconyx felt the same way.