Bike and Camp Battery Options

[MizzCano713]

I've been looking into really making my burn easier on myself when I am there; I want legitimate lighting for my hexayurt (6' Stretch) and I want to buy or build an electric bike. I have been running into a lot of different information, and I just wanna know what the best/cheapest/most reliable option for me would be? I am pretty sure I want to get a lithium ion battery, but I'm not sure what size seems necessary for BM. Will I be able to use one battery for my bike and for at camp, if I really only need to use it for lighting? Do I NEED a smart charger? What are common problems that come up on the playa involving batteries that I could work to avoid/prepare for? Also, any ideas on lighting and getting the best bang for your buck there are welcome. I'm done with lines of AA powered Christmas lights. =P

[some seeing eye]

Welcome to ePlaya! There are a few battery experts here and at ae-zone.org, a BM camp. Ae-zone message boards expose email addresses publically last I checked, use a throwaway. Local "maker spaces" and solar groups may be helpful too.

If you make a list of the exact lighting you are using or build it from discussions here that determines camp batteries. Electric bikes - halve their range and bring a very very sturdy lock. Not sure about the idea of a single battery for bike and camp. Each needs a charging plan and a heavy deep cycle lead acid battery is cheap for camp while a lighter lithium battery is more adapted to a bike.

You will be a battery and power expert soon, BM DIY style!

[MizzCano713]

What is the best lighting for a small hexayurt like mine, then? I am tired of fumbling around in the dark or with a flashlight to try and find things in my yurt, it's difficult enough with the mess! Haha.I need it to be bright so I would rather spend more than go cheap and be dissatisfied with the results. What makes sense that will light up my hexayurt without destroying part of the walls/ceiling?

[unjonharley]

What is the best lighting for a small hexayurt like mine, then? I am tired of fumbling around in the dark or with a flashlight to try and find things in my yurt, it's difficult enough with the mess! Haha.I need it to be bright so I would rather spend more than go cheap and be dissatisfied with the results. What makes sense that will light up my hexayurt without destroying part of the walls/ceiling?

I like the 5LED lite that fits on the bill of a cap.. It look where my head is turned and not in my eyes and my hands are free..

[lucky420]

I too camp in a hexayurt. I use lots of solar stake lights, just put them outside by the door during the day to recharge. I bought a marine battery this year to run the figjam cooler, I bet I could hook lights up to that too...

[Captain Goddammit]

There's a whole lot of "it depends" to sort through, one of the basic ones is how or whether you intend to charge your batteries. Have you got a generator, solar panels, or are we talking about a one-way trip toward empty?
A deep cycle "marine" battery will light your place well enough for the week but your bike is probably going to need charging if you ride a bunch.

[Meat Hunter]

Mizzcano,

There are several of us here that have the same brand of electric kits on our trikes and we are generally pretty satisfied with the driving range and lack of problems.

I do not know enough about electricity to offer advice on using trike batteries for camp lighting. I charge my 36a 48v lithium ion trike battery overnight via a generator.

If you would like to know more about outfitting a trike with an electric drive, please feel free to e-mail me.

[FIGJAM]

There are 12 volt led light bulb that screw into a regular light fixture.

I have one that is equal to a 60 watt bulb, and uses 1 amp of power.

I put it in a cheap clamp on work light, so I can use it anywhere in camp.

My deep cycle battery runs my light, stereo, and swamp cooler all week without having to recharge.

[Captain Goddammit]

I'll step up and say the idea of using the same battery for camp lighting and an electric bike (or trike) isn't a good one, for two reasons. E-bikes are usually 36 or 48 volts, and common lighting is 12 volt.
Big deep-cycle "marine" batteries are cheap compared to the lithium batteries used on bikes, and their bulk and weight isn't so much an issue if is just going to sit on the ground, so that's your best bet for camp lighting use. Expect to pay around $100 for one.

The bike is pretty much gonna need to be charged. If you haven't got power available, hey the playa is flat, pedaling is pretty easy out there...

[maladroit]

Just get some tent lighting (available in the camping section of your local web browser) and a big pack of AA batteries. It'll also work in your hexayurt. It'll last the week. If you did manage to get an electric bike, it's not likely to run on 12V. But if it did, you probably could park it next to your hexayurt and run a wire over. But why bother.

[mudpuppy000]

It seems you will need a generator to charge your electric bike, so maybe just run the lighting off that directly. I like the "5050" LED strips for camp lighting. They throw off a lot of light and you can have them color cycle and do weird stuff. You can either run those directly off a generator or get a 12v battery pack for them to light up your yurt or bike.

[Ratty]

You can go BIG. Next year year you'll want to scale back. My friend and I have vowed to keep it simple for the coming year. Sure, we are bringing coleman lanterns and we will have better solar art in our shade structure but a generator? Nope.

[Captain Goddammit]

And here I am planning on a K-cup coffeemaker for the Land Yacht...

[Ratty]

Can you swing by my camp in the morning? I take cream and sugar.

[maladroit]

Aeropress was a lifesaver last year, and it'll work with ANY method of heating some water. A full thermos of hot coffee on the art car during 35F weather was amazing. The K-cup might be convenient if you plan to make coffee on the move, but why not double down and put a full espresso bar on it?

[Captain Goddammit]

That would be a fantastic idea, but when I'm playing barista there's not much coffee in the mix anyway... just enough to call it "coffee". I'll have to pour you a nice cup of Joe's Joe sometime. Sometime when you've got nothing important to do for a while.

[maladroit]

When I said "coffee" I sort of thought the Fireball was implied.

[BBadger]

Second on the Aeropress, both on playa, and in real life. Much better output than a K-cup, but maybe not quite as convenient. What you save you can invest into a decent grinder too.

What were we talking about again...?

[Captain Goddammit]

We were talking about coffee makers, that's the direction of the thread drift.
For me at home, the K-cup isn't about quality or economy. I start work really early and it's ALL about the speed and convenience.

[BBadger]

Hmm, yeah, and even while it's not $0.07, it's only about $0.58/cup if you buy the branded K-cups, which is cheaper than gas-station coffee. It's also decent coffee, even if not perfect.

[Captain Goddammit]

Costco has boxes of cups that come to 25¢ - 30¢ a piece. I can swing that.
I put my Kill-a-Watt meter on the Keurig machine and found it uses an insignificant amount of power to just leave it on all the time, it costs virtually nothing to run it.
With it already warmed up and ready to go, the K-cup means I've got my coffee in less than one minute.
That'll work well on the M/V too.

Ironically, my M/V has a pretty robust electric system and though I use generators at camp, I do plug my camper into the M/V and use it as a power source while on the road to and from BRC.

Wow, did I just drift back?

[maladroit]

We'll drift full circle with my suggestion to mount bicycle pedals on the boat in case fuel ever runs out. Or maybe it should be oars....

[Captain Goddammit]

I like it! i think pedals are the better of those two, because I gotta have a way to drive the alternators too.
That would even eliminate the DMV permit.

[bm_cricket]

For electric bicycle/tricycle I suggest checking out a few online electric bicycle stores and get their advice. PM me if you want a name for an online store that can advise you on the right battery, motor, controller combo. You can also buy kits online. Don't get a really cheap ebay e-bike kit. The motors are junky and if the battery dies you are fighting the motor itself the whole time you pedal.

As for lights, I suggest one of two routes.

1) Big deep cycle batteries (cheap wet cell technology) which you should buy new. They will probably cost $100 for about 90Ah 12v batteries. These can be used to run an inverter and if you are smart and only use it when you NEED to, can be great for running blenders, water pumps, coffee grinders. Don't use it for charging your cell phone or your camera. Bring enough batteries for your camera that you don't need to charge it. Don't charge your phone at all. Your phone has a sad little camera anyway.

2) Used computer backup batteries from old UPS batteries. Get a volt meter and start checking out your local thrift stores. Those places often have electronic waste piles. Talk to them, see if you can scrounge for little batteries. They are usually in the 6-8 amp hour range and are perfect for running a small strip of LEDs in a tent or yurt. I bring a milk crate full of these things and I put them anyplace I need lights. A good 6Ah battery can run a small strip of RGB LEDs for 3 nights (turn it off when you go to bed).

[bm_cricket]

We were talking about coffee makers, that's the direction of the thread drift.
For me at home, the K-cup isn't about quality or economy. I start work really early and it's ALL about the speed and convenience.

You should visit my camp this year. My camp uses my commercial espresso machine. It lives in my kitchen most of the year. You can't run this using a battery like you can a K-Cup style machine, but I'm willing to go the extra mile or 4!

Back home again(1).jpg

You may call this over-kill but I call it a necessary sacrifice to the coffee gods.

[Captain Goddammit]

Overkill? In BRC that means you're doing it right!!

[trilobyte]

To figure out the kind of battery or charging you're going to need, you want to first figure out your energy needs.

An electric bike or trike is almost certainly going to need to be charged once a day (possibly more... it's a big city). While it's possible that you could probably rig some kind of lighting up that would make use of that same battery, that may be more of a hassle than its worth. Especially if you get back to camp some evening with a dead bike battery, and no other method to power the lighting inside your yurt.

For that reason alone, I'd recommend a separate battery for your camp lighting. The good news is you can probably solve a rechargeable battery for yurt lighting really easily. Figure out what strand or lighting solution you're interested in using, then you look at how much juice it uses per hour, and multiply by the number of hours you plan on using it per night. If your lighting is LED or or some other fantastic low-power solution, that should be very easy to power using a rechargeable battery. Then just get a battery charger for those batteries, and you can periodically plug it into the same power source that you'll be plugging your bike charger into.

There's plenty of other great tips in this thread, and like some seeing eye said, you'll be a battery/power expert soon enough. Cheers, and welcome aboard!

[Captain Goddammit]

The big elephant in the room here is the power source... I'm going to assume that someone who is looking at how to set up a better battery powered yurt lamp because the AA battery powered light strings sucked does NOT have access to generator power.

The real answer here is you're not going to ride an electric bike all week without a way to charge it, the lithium or whatever other battery isn't gonna make it more than a day, like Trilo said. He's got a few of them. He knows.

So the answer is get a deep cycle "marine" battery from someplace like Costco for about $100, then get some 12 volt LED lights and your yurt will be illuminated for the week. Forget the electric bike unless you have real electricity to charge it from.

[bm_cricket]

Forget the electric bike unless you have real electricity to charge it from.

This is really the key.... And your options are:

1) gas or diesel powered generator. Don't get the Walmart special. Please. Really. If you can't talk over the noise comfortably when you are standing right next to it then it is too loud.

2) very very very large solar array (3000+ watt) plus several deep cycle batteries.

3) wind power. This is a cool option that I saw done several times last year and seemed to work very well!

I'm sad to say it but gas power is probably the cheapest, easiest, best option for you. Please use a quiet generator. I'm just such a nice guy that I would never actively do anything to harm another person..... But loud generators sometimes inspire me to reconsider my polite disposition.

[Token]

I love it when someone gets motivated to build something non-trivial and expensive for the sole purpose of enhancing on-playa laziness.

How heavy can your wear n tear possibly be?