Car Battery Marcum

[Yooper77]

Is there a way that I can put the deep cycle battery in my shanty and run my Marcum, fishcam, and other 12V electronics? I was thinking of using a cigarette lighter adapter, and a power inverter, or a different set up with alligator clips. Just curious if anybody has done something like this and can give me some pointers, so I do not fry my gear.
I did buy a 12V solar charger from, TSC to put in my shanty window, but I'm not sure how well it works yet.

[delta9]

I'm thinking you are not using a portable, but rather a more of a permy. Many many ways to go about it, my only advice is be sure to fuse and dedicate switched circuits to specific devises. Calculate average solar power generation, verses equipment power consumption. A voltmeter for battery status would help with management.

If you are using a marine battery some crimp on ring terminals would serve as a better connection than alligator clips. Your connections are very important, if they become poor you could get voltage variance, or worse a hot spot that could cause a fire.

Take some time and build a power distribution center, then your battery would only require the solar charger and power distribution centers main leads. The fewer connections made at the battery the better.

[michianafisherman]

You can do the 12 volt battery to run your all your stuff. You need to be careful with polarity and the proper fusing. The cigarette lighter plug will work, but be careful they don't have the fuses inside them. The fuses inside them don't work well in the wet environment. I like the visible type holders.

[mricefish]

Yea you should be able to do it.  In my perm shack i use old car battery to extend the life of little battery.  the camera takes lots of battery (over the whole day, or weekend) too so it works good for that too.    have also found out that the fish house lights, and the vexlar will run off a DeWalt 18v battery pack.  just hard to keep the connections from touching, but once you solve that they work great too and very light to carry around.

[DIRTBALL2]

You can run your Vex from your car battery! If you are running it from the battery that's installed in your car, whatever you do, DO NOT TRY STARTING YOUR CAR with the Vex still connected! Instant cardiac arrest guaranteed! :woot:DIRTBALL2

[eriksat1]

Back in the old days that is how we did it. I used to drag a car battery on a sled with my Humminbird super sixty flasher.

[Yooper77]

OK, so alligator clips to a deep cycle battery, or do I need to wire a car charger directly to the battery and plug it in?
I do not want speculation, just what you have successfully done.

[eriksat1]

A deep cycle battery should have enough power to run a flasher for a month straight without needing a charge. I would just bring the battery home once in a while and hook it to a 12v  6 amp charger just like you would do on a boat battery deep cycle.

[mricefish]

OK, so alligator clips to a deep cycle battery, or do I need to wire a car charger directly to the battery and plug it in?
I do not want speculation, just what you have successfully done.

Alligator clips right to the battery here, well they are a little bigger than a alligator clip, you know what the clam looks like on your jumper cables?  Those are I would say like 8 inches long, the ones i have are just a light duty clam like that I would say 2-3 inches long.  If you look around at a hardware store you should be able to find something that is big enough to hook up the the terminals on the battery easy.  I have never run a fuse in the line, always something i was going to do just have not done it yet i guess.   

And I was talking about carrying out an extra battery just to use for this, was not hooking it up right to the car i guess.

[michianafisherman]

You need the polarized plug ends. This way you will never make a mistake hooking things up backwards. Most of your equipment will fail if you hook the negative to positive or vise versa. Make things easier in the dark or those days when friends try to help and don't know your routine.