Best High Capacity Powerbank Options ?

Talay

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After hundreds (thousands ?) of pages of research, I decided to split down my search into components. So here is my question on how to provide back up power once the vehicle is parked.

These are to run a dual camera system with the best HD video I can find.

QUATTRO Power Pack X10 Dash Cam Battery Pack £300
http://www.blackboxmycar.com/collec.../quattro-power-pack-x10-dash-cam-battery-pack

Cellink Battery B 2nd Generation £140
http://www.blackboxmycar.com/collections/dashcam-battery-pack/products/cellink-battery-b

Mi Power Bank 16000mAh £25
http://www.mi.com/en/pb16000/

Original XIAOMI 5.1V 2.1A 10000mAh Power Bank £7

Now I don't know whether the last two cheap options can function being charged by a car but hopefully someone else may be able to help. Obviously if you know of a better way then please let me know. We'll need 2 set of whatever, one for a BMW X3 and the other for a Nissan Murano.

The Quattro and Cellink seem to be able to be stacked or expanded. Without much technical electrical knowledge, I do not know if you could put a bank of Mi 16000s in series and have them effectively charge each other (they seem to require 5A and can deliver 5A so as a novice, this would appear possible - potentially).

Reading in this forum I find comment that you can get a $20 unit which is essentially the same as a $100/200 unit and though I'll pay what is necessary, if I could pay 4 x £7 instead of 4 x £140 then that is a huge difference.

Thanks
 
I find it impossible to justify those expensive options, I'd rather go second battery and a dual battery splitter for charging for that sort of money
 
I find it impossible to justify those expensive options, I'd rather go second battery and a dual battery splitter for charging for that sort of money

Fundamentally I am totally in your camp but I do not see where we could put a second regular battery. The BMW's battery is hidden in the rear and though the Murano's is in the front, both are way too new (BMW only a few weeks) to start cutting holes or welding in bits.

I guess my question is whether the cheap secondary options are viable or whether we do need the expensive units ?

Of course, if there is a safe secondary battery which can be housed in a box and that box secured somewhow to the car then we might be in business for that option.
 
yes understand the vehicle itself can be a limiting factor in what's possible, not a fan of using lithium batteries in cars for this purpose though, not the best environment for them

what sort of time frames are you looking at running cameras for anyway?

side note, I've got each of the Xiaomi power banks and they're not great, not something I'd recommend, I think there are better models in the market
 
My environment is quite temperate. Winter may see a little under 0c, perhaps down to -5c for a short while but daytime across the months from 10c to 25c.

As to running times, we need the maximum protection when the cars are parked, hence the power banks. One vehicle runs a couple of 30/45 min journeys a day whilst the other runs much less, perhaps only 2 x 10 mins per day but boosted on a weekend. People here bump into your car and just drive off and I am trying to cover at least some of those incidences.
 
you need cameras running constantly to catch that sort of behavior, you can't rely on motion detect alone to pick up minor stuff, that also means large memory cards to get longer recording time or anything of interest could get overwritten before you get a chance to see it, 25c might not sound like much but in summer than can easily be 55c inside the car when parked, +30c above ambient temps is typical for a car parked in the sun
 
Constant running rather than event saving is what I thought I'd need when I set out on this journey but I also came at it from the other end and said that if I have a 1TB SSD or HD card then storage shouldn't be an issue and the problem would be power. As a few cams can handle 256/512GB of storage then perhaps that is what is needed ?

Again though we come back to power and how to supply it.

What about this serial cheap power bank option on the Mi 16,000 ? Is that a non starter ?
 
Constant running rather than event saving is what I thought I'd need when I set out on this journey but I also came at it from the other end and said that if I have a 1TB SSD or HD card then storage shouldn't be an issue and the problem would be power. As a few cams can handle 256/512GB of storage then perhaps that is what is needed ?
?

you'd want to look at something with large card support, not a lot to choose in dual cams, Lukas maybe, not sure


What about this serial cheap power bank option on the Mi 16,000 ? Is that a non starter ?

I have that model also, not impressed by it to be honest, in the larger sizes the Anker models seem to get good reviews
 
Can you run those Ankar as pass through or in series ? Or even the Mi 16000 ?
 
Anker® Astro E7 Ultra High Capacity 26800mAh 3 port 4A Compact External Battery Charger €49.99
https://www.amazon.de/gp/B00M1KP12E
Not a bad price for this but can you bypass or charge from a car ?
 
I haven't used the Anker product myself but the feedback I've seen suggest they are better than a lot of others, I think @reverend may have used some of their product (I think) and might be able to offer his thoughts, assuming it was him that mentioned them previously
 
Can you run those Ankar as pass through or in series ? Or even the Mi 16000 ?

This is not a good practice. At one time Anker touted pass-through charging as a feature but they no longer do because doing so stresses the cells and compromises battery longevity. Lithium-ion cell chemistry is not designed to charge and discharge at the same time for several reasons, one of which is because a parasitic load confuses the charger, especially at the point where it is nearly at full charge. Also, when charging, ions of lithium move through the electrolyte from the positive electrode to the negative cathode. During discharge the ions move in the opposite direction. Charge can flow either from positive to negative or from negative to positive and so attempting to do both at the same time is why it is not a good idea.

@russ331 has one or more Anker battery banks and has reported good results.
 
I have two Solove 10k and 20k and they seem to perform above 80% rating so very good.
Takes week to deplete using on phones and tablets.
Search my reviews on battery section here.
Also, most of these battery packs don't allow simultaneous charge and discharge meaning you can only do one at a time.
 
I'm not sure why this is even issue really ?

Surely when the engine is on, the power is drawn from the engine's supply and not from the battery, allowing the battery to be charged.

This is surely not beyond the developers of such things is it ?
 
they don't have an ignition sensing pass through function to know what you want to do with it unfortunately
 
So we need a relay which is switches as a function of the ignition being turned on to halt draw on the powerbank and a circuit to charge the powerbank only when the ignition is on.

And we can build a space shuttle ?

Surely the market for this is millions of units per year with a potential sale to a car manufacturer as proprietary technology and they put it in their cars from the get go ?
 
So we need a relay which is switches as a function of the ignition being turned on to halt draw on the powerbank and a circuit to charge the powerbank only when the ignition is on.

And we can build a space shuttle ?

You can certainly buy or build a circuit like that. Personally, I just unplug my cameras from their 12V sockets and plug them into a battery bank when I leave my vehicle parked. The cameras run for many, many hours and I recharge the battery banks when I return home. I've been doing this happily for at least the last year and a half. One of these days I may install a battery discharge prevention device but until then this works fine for me.
 
Surely the market for this is millions of units per year with a potential sale to a car manufacturer as proprietary technology and they put it in their cars from the get go ?


I suspect it's quite a limited market actually
 
So to bring it back to the four options in the original question, so the expensive ones work or are they just rip off versions of the cheap ones and none of them work ?

If they work but are expensive then that is fine but if they don't work .......
 
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