Camp Lighting Ideas

Zoom · Post by **Zoom** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 10:37 am

WHEN YOU TRIED TO AC INVERTER FROM A DEEP CYCLE BATTERY, HOW MUCH LIFE DID YOU GET FROM IT. I WAS PLANNING ON HANGING SOME GIFTMAS LIGHTS UP AND A COUPLE OF BLACKLIGHTS. PLEASE ADVISE. THANK YOU AND LOVE TO ALL

diane o'thirst · Post by **diane o'thirst** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 2:47 pm

I ran three strings of faerie lights off a single deep cycle to light up my yurt the first year. The battery lasted roughly 24 hours or three nights. Then again, I was using the old-fashioned incandescent bulbs which are power suckers. They drink a watt PER LAMP.

The LED lightstrings of today are a lot more energy efficient aside from being a lot less goofball-proof. Vis-a-vis, they won't break if you accidently step on them.

B-Rella · Post by **B-Rella** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 5:35 pm

AntiM mentioned tap lights for tent lighting. I keep seeing these things at the second hand stores and I was wondering if anyone has tried to rewire these with LED lights? I was thinking about them for ambient low-lying camp lighting, but with LEDs they might be even nicer.
Thanks,
Rella

diane o'thirst · Post by **diane o'thirst** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 7:18 pm

I had some...they're crap. They break all the time. I bought a box and half of them didn't work, the rest fluffed out after ten clicks. I'm not good at electrical manipulation, so I just don't bother, they went into the plastic recycling bin. And they require batteries.

If you're interested in low-level ambient lighting, just watch for when Jerry's or Fred Meyer or ShopKo has those plastic solar lanterns for sale, $20 for 6 or 8. No moving parts, no batteries, just stick 'em in the ground and they'll do the rest by themselves.

(H'mm...thinking...)

Actually, it's February, we're about due for a "Get Ready For Spring in the Garden!"-type sale. Keep your eyes peeled.

robotland · Post by **robotland** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 7:18 am

On my last expedition to Menards I spotted LED taplights. Three white diodes in a little plastic puck, available in designer colors. About nine bucks. I couldn't see what type of fittings, if any, they had without opeing the packaging, but they'd make great tent lights or extra dome lights for the car that won't run down the battery.
Zoom, you can get UV diodes and neon tubes that consume less energy- Especially the diodes. They don't have quite the "oomph" of big flouros, but when cleverly deployed they get the job done.
B-Rella, you can swap out the incands for LEDs in taplights, but as Do'T observes, they're mostly crap and a waste of time. Solar yard lights are LED hackable too, and I've seen some great results. My friend Sparks has made some nifty blinkyred AND UV pathlights.

LeChatNoir · Post by **LeChatNoir** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 10:11 am

regionalchaos wrote:Anyway this is a great thread. I've really been thinking a lot lately about building a small scale power grid. Using a bank of battaries and a generator to charge them. The goal would be to have to run the genny for no more then 3 hours a day to charge the bank.

Me too... but I've been looking at this as a source of power:

http://www.sunforceproducts.com/english ... .asp?id=72

Similar cost to a gas generator and much less noise. The "ideal conditions" listed for 400 DC watts is 25mph winds. I figure the playa probably averages that (and it begins to produce at 7 mph). Couple that with a couple of deep cycles and there you go!

A few years ago, I was exploring the idea of running LED lighting off my truck batteries. I asked a friend of mine for some advice on this and he sent me the following email. My email to him is first, so you’ll have context for my question.

(If you aren't interested in technical stuff, skip to the bottom of this post and click the invertor link. Half way down that page is a handy little calculator that will figure how long a simple bank of batteries will run your items without any recharging.)

I’ve learned a lot since then, but am still needing to actually experiment around with stuff outside of running formulas in my head. Be warned, this is long and technical blah blah blah, but full of very good info for building a custom system, as well as figuring how long your battery will last and how much you can run off it. (I suggest copying this into your word processing program for future reference, cause it'll probably take a few read throughs and still makes my head spin a bit).

> In my honkin' big dodge, I have two 12
> volt, 750 cold cranking amp
> (@ 0 deg. F) batteries. They list a continuous run
> time of 150 minutes. So
> I'm thinking... couldn't I use these for banking
> juice?... I mean I have a
> plug right back there at the hitch for hooking up. A
> panel or panels
> recharging during the day and only a slight draw at
> night... as in a 12 volt
> light system or perhaps at most a small inverter.

The short answer is if you're only going to run LEDs
you won't even need to recharge your battery.

If you're going to run a small wattage inverter
100-200 Watts at short duty cycles you should consider
trickle charging the battery with one of those solar
panels that plug directly into your cigarette lighter.
Alternately you could idle the engine every now and
then but I'm not sure if that fits in with the rules
of the event.

Now the not so short answer.

Typically a high output white or blue LED draws about
20 milliAmps at it's rated voltage (2.8 to 5 volts
usually (more about that in a moment)) To pull 1 amp
off LED power you'd need 50 LED's (again at there
operating voltage).

The operating voltage is important because too high a
voltage will fry the LED in no time. You can connect
any number of them in series so long as the sum of
each LEDs operating (or MAX) voltage is greater than
the voltage that you intend to apply to the LED. i.e.
(5) 2.8 Volt LEDs in series adds up to (5 x 2.8 = 14
volts).

So... the 50 LEDs at 2.8 volts that I mentioned
earlier...because you have a 12 volt source that means
you get to use 5 x 50 LEDS = 250 LEDs. And that's for
a generous 1 amp draw off your battery. High output
LEDs have between 3 and 5 candela output so now you
have 1250 candela output. That's a lot of light. I'd
experiment with one string of LEDs and then expand
from there to what you really need. Do not buy these
from RadioShack in this quantity, you'll go broke and
they'll get rich. I'd check for big qty discounts on
the web sales places. The blue LEDs really look cool
as well.

Some of the LEDs will say "12 Volt with built in
resistor" LEDs aren't typically designed to operatemuch above 5 Volts so they have to add a resistor to
limit the current into the LED. These will work fine
but they aren't as efficient as LEDs without
resistors. The resistor is shedding heat instead of
providing useful light. Better to do the math and
connect multiple LEDs in series.

(Warning here: use the intended voltage to protect
them from voltage spikes should you turn on the engine
while your lighting system is connected.) If you
design your system around the MAX voltage any
overvoltage will likely blow one of the LEDs (and in
series when one goes out they all go black).

I don't recommend doing this with high output krypton
or halogen bulbs. We tried to apply this same
principle with some special forces tactical lights and
quickly blew a few $40 light bulbs. The voltage
inevitably is dropped entirely across one bulb and not
the other and poof.

I found something interesting on the web
http://www.pacificpowerbatteries.com/ab ... y%20FAQ/ca rfaq7.html

Car batteries are specially designed for high initial
amps applications and shallow discharges. Cars usually
start in five to 15 seconds; to start an
enginetypically consumes 5%-10% of the battery's
capacity. Car batteries should NOT be discharged below
90% state-of-charge.

The 750 CCA rate is the amps that the battery can
provide at a voltage greater than 7.5 Volts
continuously for 30 seconds. That doesn't mean that
the battery is dead after 30 seconds but that it's
energy has been greatly depleted.

That said...you will be in a hot environment and you
won't be needing the full reserve for starting the
truck. So running the radio or an inverter for a few
hours or some LED's all night isn't going to kill your
batteries. Running a 1000 watt stero at full volume
for prolonged periods of time would probably shorten
their life considerably. When you deep discharge anon-marine battery you can permanently change the
chemistry of the plates thus permanently damage the
battery.

Typically an automotive battery has about 70 amp*hours
at 3.5 amp discharge rate. A discharge rate is
specified because the amp*hour rating is generally
longer for smaller discharge rates and lower for
higher discharge rates. This is because the heat
(wasted energy) generated internally by a battery is
~proportional to the current drawn from the battery.
So lower current draw equals less waste. OK...so lets
use the 70 amp*hour and 3.5 amp discharge rate. You
have two of these batteries so that means your system
could discharge 70 amp*hour @ 7 amps OR 140 amp*hours
@ 3.5 amps. The voltage off an automotive battery
discharging at 3.5 amps is easily 12 Volts so what you
get is (140 amp*hour * 12 Volts) = 1680 WattHours of
Capacity in your batteries @ 3.5 amp load.

Let's be conservative and say that you don't want to
drop the energy content of the batteries more than 10%
before you recharge them. That means you have 168
WattHours of energy to work with between recharging.
Going back to our ludicrous array of LEDS that ran 1
amp at 12 volts we see we're burning (12 V * 1 amp =
12 watts) That means you could run that array for 14
hours continuosly and still have 90% capacity in your
trucks batteries...probably a lot more but we're being
conservative. If you cut the array down to about 25
LEDs (1/10th) you could run the array for 140 hours
continously (about 6 days) and not drop the energy in
the batteries below 90%.

OK let's say you want to run a 100 Watt inverter for
your laptop computer or what have you. You could run
that for (168 watt* hours / 100 watts = 1.68 hours)
without draining the batteries below 90%. Still doing
pretty well. Want to run a 1000 Watt microwave? Now
you have to consider the thermal losses in the
inverter but for arguement sake... (168
watt*hours/1000 watts = .168 hours or about 10
minutes).

LEDs are getting better and brighter... Here's one of the newer light engines in raw parts form:

http://www.lumileds.com/products/line.cfm?lineId=17

And this site has great info on invertors and some very useful formulas:

http://www.donrowe.com/inverters/invert ... l#how_long

diane o'thirst · Post by **diane o'thirst** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 8:05 pm

Quick point-out...

Xterras have an inverter already installed in their cargo area. I believe the Honda Element and the Infiniti SUV do too, correct my math if that's not the case...

Wow, a copper-paint job Xterra with a navigation system, Bose stereo and flex fuel capablility...there's my dream machine <img src="http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y240/W ... edgrin.gif" alt="Image hosting by Photobucket">

Kinetic IV · Post by **Kinetic IV** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 8:24 pm

05 & 06 X's don't have the inverter anymore. They don't have superchargers either (sniff, sniff). But they have plenty of 12 volt powerpoints though. I have an 05 Offroad Edition and I had to put in my own inverter so I could run my laptop, GPS, and stuff.

robotland · Post by **robotland** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 7:54 am

diane o'thirst wrote:Quick point-out...

Xterras have an inverter already installed in their cargo area. I believe the Honda Element and the Infiniti SUV do too, correct my math if that's not the case...

No inverter in the Honda Elephant, just an extra 12V plug in back. (And a BRC sticker on the gate.)

Zoom · Post by **Zoom** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 9:00 am

[color=green]I KNOW THE HOLIDAYS ARE OVER BUT WHERE COULD I LOCATE BATTERY OPERATED GIFTMAS LIGHTS? WOULD I ALSO BE ABLE TO LOCATE BATTERY OPERATED BLACK LIGHTS (FLOURESENT). THANK YOU FOR YOUR INPUTS. LOVE TO ALL[/color]

Post by **AntiM** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 9:15 am

I use these:

http://tinyurl.com/7pyjj

buy online or at the mall. Shows a power cord, but they run on batteries too. There's bigger ones available too.

Zoom · Post by **Zoom** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 9:40 am

THANK YOU ANTIM. IF ANYONE ELSE HAS OTHER IDEAS FOR BLACKLIGHTS AND ETC. PLEASE ADVISE. ANTIM I WILL GO TO THE MALL TONIGHT. MY GIRLFRIEND KEEPS TELLING ME WE STILL HAVE TIME BUT I AM IMPATIENT FOR THE BURN. THANK YOU AND LOVE TO ALL

ibdave · Post by **ibdave** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 6:03 pm

Hey Zoom, I wish you could figure out how to compress time, then slow it down during the burn...

Zoom · Post by **Zoom** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 5:38 am

yes that would be great. less work and reality and more fun and enjoyment from real people. thank you and love to all