With the above and assorted odds and ends, I guess it wound up costing me $160 or so. NiMH batteries do cost quite a bit more than SLAs but, for me, the weight savings alone made them worth the investment.
kenyee wrote:
...
Did you put the battery pack together yourself? I haven't seen clear shrink wrap that size
Fortunately, that wasn't required. The nice folks at cheapbatterypacks.com built the pack to my specifications.
Thanks for the compliment on the soldering. I try to be neat. If I could just locate my stash of heat shrink tubing I'd put booties on the switch and outlet push-on connectors.
brucemuir wrote:
wait, those push on connectors are BARE metal...and they're HOT,
you need to insulate those.
super nice job otherwise.
unfortunately my monolights have a digital power selection interface so I can use a Vag II so this probably won't work either.
You mean it can't use a VII?
I have great success with Anderson's Powerpoles:
I mean my Norman Monolights cant be powered by a VII type battery inverter rig because of voltage fluctuations. Some monolights with digital power selectors can't run off the Vagabonds.
I believe a Innovotronix will work but haven't looked into it too far.
I have norman 400B so I'm good but sometimes I need more pop.
The nice thing about Deans vs Powerpoles is Deans are much smaller and can be rigged as a 90-degree connection, so it fits in tighter spaces and doesn't stress the cables as much.. That's a problem I had with my first pack that had Tamiya connectors, it was about 2 inches long when you connected both ends together.
bacilonur wrote:
The nice thing about Deans vs Powerpoles is Deans are much smaller and can be rigged as a 90-degree connection, so it fits in tighter spaces and doesn't stress the cables as much.. That's a problem I had with my first pack that had Tamiya connectors, it was about 2 inches long when you connected both ends together.
The Deans are perfect so thanks for making it a point to recommend them in your write-up.
Also, did you use the AIMS 180 or a larger inverter in your 12000mAh pack?
Right now I'm just using a third 180W in there because there aren't any commercially available units that will fit in it (Pelican 1120). It works great for me because it's a fully redundant system, I can swap out the battery or inverter from any of them at any time, or pack one in the pockets of my camera bag just in case I might need portable power. I could never do that with my old Porty or AcuteB. :-)
I got all the size and weight info of all the PSW inverters on the market, and there aren't any 300W units that will fit nicely into any small Pelicans. I helped a guy on here build a 600W version with a Pelican 1300, but then the Aims 600 turned out to be bigger in real life than the 9 x 6 x 3 spec, so that kinda sucked.
That Pelican case is tough.
