Street Lights on a Modular

Probably the easiest would be to wire all the lights in parrallel and use a

9V battery.

I'm not real sure how long it would last though.

Don

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Figure the current and voltage that the lights take and make sure that the battery can supply that much current for the time that you want to run the ligths. You may want to run the lights off of a switching voltage regulator from the track power charging a battery so that you don't have that much of a problem with the battery charging. This will allow you to use a smaller battery which only needs to provide power for a few minutes rather than for the whole time the module is showing. Switching regulators can be built to take a wide range of input voltages and put out a steady voltage. If so, I'd do a stepup type to 12V or so for the lighting circuit.

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I would not use a battery. Use a 'wall wart' transformer (battery eliminator) that is rated at 9 volts.

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On Thu, 13 Nov 2003 18:48:14 GMT, "Patrick Carcirieri" shared this with the world:

If I recall, those are 12 volt. You could use 8 D, C, AA, or even AAA batteries in series (or less to dim the bulbs a bit).

Or you could use a single 9 volt battery, and the bulbs will last forever, although they will be a bit dim and yellow.

You will probably want to look at using rechargeable batteries, as the cost of replacing disposable will add up over time.

Just curious, why don't you want to use a plug-in power supply?

Kent

The suggestions I've seen wouldn't power the lights too long. The D batteries would last the longest obviously but probably still not acceptable. I had to do a self contained modular once. I used two of the six volt "lantern" batteries in series. I was amazed at how long they lasted. The down side is that they are heavy.

Do batteries list their current/voltage times?

If not, how do you determine that?

Just looking at options of not having extension cords running all over the place.

which is for a NiMH cell, 1.2 Volts/cell, 2.0 Ampere Hours capacity. 4 cells in series provide 4.8 volts - probably not enough for the application so try

8 cells (this starts to get pricey - they are $17.95 for four). If you draw 500 milliamperes from this pack it should last about 4 hours.

If it were me, I'd go for GelCel batteries as are used in UPSs, etc. A quick look at the UPS listing on the same site

shows a 6 volt battery ($21.95) with a 10 Ampere Hour capacity. The 500 ma load would operate for about 20 hours.

HTH,

One plug in 9-12v wall-wart is all you'll need to run all your lights, so all you'll need is one extension cord. You've probably got one sitting around the house from some small appliance/toy/gadget that died. Snip off the connector and use it.

I guarantee you'll soon tire of battery replacement/recharging if you go that route.

Mike Tennent "IronPenguin" Operating Traffic Lights Crossbucks Special Effects Lighting

All batteries of any size usually list their voltage rating and the amp-hour rating. The first is, of course, quite obvious and the second is how many amps the battery will supply for an hour. For two hours, the current is half that and so forth. The amp-hour rating is basically how many electrons that the battery will put out. I'll note though that the rating isn't quite accurate as the higher the current draw, the less cap. that a battery has but the amp-hour rating is the standard.

-- Bob May Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less. Works evevery time it is tried!