Oddball battery recharge questions

[tradkelly]

Hey everyone. Just got my PS230 last week on the recommendation of a friend who had one, and after playing with his while climbing.

I hope you'll all love this and be able to give me some decent feedback. I purchased the camera for it's small size, quality, ability to take short .avi; it's perfect for climbing multipitch rock without having to cart around a big case.

I'm planning on taking a trip to the Bugaboos (big Canadian provincial park west of Banff) in August, and I am trying to put together a solar recharging system for about a two-week expedition (ie, no car batteries or plug-in electrical available). I have acquired a backup NB-1LH battpack, a CBC-NB1 car charger, and a single Brunton solarport 2.2W solar sharging device.

The rating on the car charger is 4.3W at 12-24VDC, but the Brunton (single unit) only puts out 2.2W (145mA@15.2VDC). This should only mean that my charging time is doubled, if everything works linearly (ie, some engineer thought about trickle charges through the car charging device). Ideas otherwise? I can link two solar units for 4.4W of power and get to the requisite input power for the car charger, but it'd be another $75 investment.

Anyone ever come across this or similar? TIA.
:)

kelly

[tradkelly]

Alrighty.
I have fully discharged a battery now (movies from skiing at Vail are forthcoming... ) The battery now reads at 3.1mA and 3.68VDC.

I had some luck on a sunny afternoon (yesterday) getting the solar charger to power the LED on the car charger, indicating a full load (green light); I'll place the solar charger in the windscreen of the car tomorrow, facing south, fully sunny day expected, and see if I can get out and check the timing on the recharge every hour or so until I get a green light and report my findings.

Apparently the system will work at half of the car charger's input wattage (so far). Might be useful to ya if you're on a backpacking trip or something like that where there's no power.

:) kelly

[Conk]

Thanks for the research updates

[tradkelly]

Using the fully-depleted battery after 7.5 hours of full sun at 2.2W (half the rated input power for the car charger), I was able to take 54 photos with the LCD on and flash turned on for all shots. This is somewhat lower than the 170 that the manual quotes, but I don't think that they were assuming using the flash all of the time either.

Next, to test a fully-charged battery in the same conditions; if I get a significantly higher number of shots, then I will probably conclude that I should up the input power by adding a second solar unit (they are designed to piggyback in this manner). More when I have those results.

A fully charged battery yesterday took 150MB of video and pics skiing at Vail (cold temps and wind chill around zero) with lots of playback (20 min?). Very nice.

kelly

[tradkelly]

I got 244 pics with flash on a freshly charged NB-1LH from the wall, so 7.5hr on a 2.2W solar source isn't enough. I'll report back when I have something on how the 4.4W source works - it might not fully charge in a day, but could provide partial. Also, I'd not expect to be completely draining a battery most days with normal photo taking, so I'll try a 2-day solar with the upgrade and report results.

kelly

[Conk]

Great! Now how about some photo's?:)

[tradkelly]

Okay. Here are the video clips, a nice pano of the Garden of the Gods with snow, some climbing, skiing, and ice climbing pictures... all of course cut way down for web publication. :)

http://www.geocities.com/tradkelly/2003climbs.html

kelly

[Conk]

Your "Silver Cascade " photo is awsome.