Speedychris22

iTrader: (68)

Can I use a car battery as a power source for my charger? I have a Hyperion charger that has the connectors to hook up to a battery

bigdog69

YES I have done this b4 i made a good power supply also used a jumpstart box..

Dieselpower

iTrader: (25)

indeed, but plan on getting a power supply for future use. It's a pain in the butt popping hoods to charge and whether it's a battery or Jump Box (which is still a battery), you will not always get consistant voltage input.

H0LESH0T

iTrader: (7)

Sucks to when you forgot to turn you car on every now and again and the battery doesn't have enough to start the car.
I heard about people using car battery chargers as power supplys. Anyone else heard of this?

Dave H

Yes, be careful as modern auto batteries don't like being discharged very much. Better to use a deep cycle (marine) battery.

As far as I know the basic car battery charger trick, while not ideal, only works with chargers that can deal with the wide range of voltage they put out depending on load. Generally they go higher than the 15V upper input limit of many RC chargers when not charging. Never tried a 'smart' car charger, I suspect they wouldn't work at all, likely would shut off before charging could start.

vg30_s12

I've found a way that I think is good, maybe the other experenced members can chime in

I've got an imax b6 charger and I use an ac adapter in the ciggerette lighter port and then use the regular wall charger hookup
Ive never had any problems yet and the ac adapter has an auto power cut if the car battery gets too low...
Its awesome to charger my stuff any time and not use the juice I'm paying for at home

Dave H

While that does work, a couple of observations.

Converting DC power to AC is fairly inefficient, wasting quite a bit of power, then the chargers built in power supply loses a little more converting back to DC. Would be far better, more efficient, and easier on the car battery to buy or rig up an adapter that goes directly from the cigarette plug to the chargers DC input. Charger actually runs on DC, the auto is DC, no need to go through the DC to AC to DC process.

The car battery power is far from free, the car engine will charge the battery back up at a far higher cost in gasoline than the home power costs. One of the reasons many want or have an electric or plug in hybrid car, the electric grid power is considerably cheaper than gasoline (more expensive to buy the car however, at least so far). Granted if you’re out and about the car may be the only choice, but whenever possible home power is way cheaper.