Ultimate Off-Road Utility Light and Power Station

Que?

 

wut?

 

Tapatalk skipped over the last page so it looked like you were responding to nothing.

Looks like the new box turned out great. I still need to make it out there. Hopefully soon.

 

second time going in two weeks, and I'm already excited for whenever the next time comes around.

 

Sub'd, this is quite a brilliant idea!

 

nothing new, modification wise, or building of new boxes, but I do use the light and speaker boxes fairly regularly. speaker box gets used about once a week, and the light/power box a couple times a month. both will see much heavier use come summer time.

 

Subd

 

Subd to great info. I've had the idea for a sort of electric camp box. Exterior lights and speakers are more than I was thinking. I would just like to power an assortment of outlets to power a few tent essentials like fan or heated blanket and probably add USB or something to charge the phone. Recharging is important as well.

 

if you use a larger box, like I used for the speakers, you could really pack some batteries in there and charge/power things for an entire weekend of camping no problem.

 

Make sure you bring the hand truck to move it around though.

Just skip the little batteries and put in a diehard 31m.

 

I'm aware how potentially heavy the box can get. It would just be carried from the truck into the tent. Would a motorcycle battery be over kill? I'm a novice to the game.

 

You'll want to look at the amp draw of the accessories you want to run, and how long you want them to run. Then you can determine the number of amp hours you'll need in a battery. Whatever you decide, make sure the battery is of the sealed variety.

 

subd

 

Should anything stop me from wiring these batteries up in series? http://bigtimebattery.com/store/NP1212.html?gclid=COO0luftqMcCFVg8gQodwcILaQ
The draw for the lights I'm going to use is .9A @24V and 2A @12V, and with a 15 AH battery @24V I would have ~16.6 hours of runtime @24V or ~15 hours of runtime @12V.

 

You shouldn't have any issues wiring two SLA batteries in series. So you'll pull your 12V load from one battery and run your 24V load from the series connection, correct?

 

I was thinking of just getting a 24V cigarette plug and using that to charge, I don't really think I need a 12V plug as I'm building it for lighting specifically.

So I would only have 2 batteries in the box, and they would be in series for the light.

 

I am going to give this a bump. Just ordered a case, battery, and light. I am making one of these as a christmas present for my father. He likes to go ice fishing so that is what it is being geared towards. I am setting it up so he has USB ports to charge his phone/listen to music, LED lights for late night pack up or when he is in his shelter, and lastly it should be able to plug into his fish finder to power it so he doesn't have to keep buying AA's.

Should be a fun project for me and quite useful for him. I will only be running one battery to keep costs down and because it will mainly be used to run a phone and fish finder for a couple hours at a time.

 

Sub, this is awesome.

 

Sub'd. Great idea and write-up

 

thanks guys.

totally unrelated to the original build, except for the fact that I used the same orange box, but here's the latest electronics project:

I have a habit of building things for people as gifts for their birthdays and Christmas. My dad's gift this Christmas took me a little longer than normal. my folks bought a 44 foot boat a little over a year ago. they are traveling around on it a lot, as my father nears retirement. the frequently drop anchor, and take the dinghy to shore for dinner/drinks. they then end up returning to the boat at after dark. to help them both locate the boat, as well as make boarding it from the dinghy easier, I wanted to get them some lights that could illuminate the entire rear of the boat, and the water around it. then I decided I didn't want them to have to leave the lights on all night if they didn't want to. the solution was a wireless controller.

end result: I built a waterproof box that houses batteries for the light, so It can run independent of the boats electronics. it also house all of the circuitry and wireless module. the wireless unit and the lights are powered by two 12 volt batteries, and it will run the lights for a long time, but I wanted this to be a set it and forget it kind of thing, so I wired up a solar panel with a built in charge regulator, so they'll never have to manually re-charge the box.

then my mom mentioned to me that my dad was looking into having a backup camera installed on the boat, to make getting in and out of smaller slips at the dock easier with just a single person. so now the box and remote also power/activate a backup camera and monitor.

the box itself. master on/off switch, and a 12v charging plug (just in case you want to charge a phone or something).


waterproof wire penetrations. top one is power in for the solar charger. bottom two are power and ground out to the lights and camera.


the guts


solar panel. just over 1 square foot. box sticking off the bottom is the charge regulator.


gave him two lights with some pretty serious brackets to mount them to the handrail on the upper deck of the boat, facing backwards, to light up everything behind the boat.


the monitor and camera. the monitor may not be needed, as I think the nav system on the boat has video in channels. being that it is going to be around salt water almost constantly, I got a more robust, durable camera than what I use on my truck.



waterproof plugs on everything




the remote. tested at roughly 1/8 of a mile, and it worked great. couldn't test from any farther, since I would have needed some waders to walk ant further away.


wiring harness all coiled up, ready to go down the boat for install.