Simple Solar Battery Cam Tutorial

[HALOJmpr]

I don't know if anyone has done a thread on this or not but I have gotten tired of buying batteries for my trail cams. On searching I have found some long term battery packs for cameras with an external power jack but they are $49-$65 and they still have to be recharged once they finally run down. I decided to make a battery pack for mine and set it up with a 6v solar charger .... woo hooo .... no more batteries for a while!

I bought a Wildgame Innovations IR4($99) the 6v Wildgame Solar Charger ($12.99) and the 6v Wildgame 4.5 ah Battery ($9.99). Then I went to Radio Shack and bought a pack of size M DC power supply connections($3).

 

[HALOJmpr]

Next I got out the wire cutters, light gauge wire(Take a look at any power supply adapter to reference wire size), solder gun, solder and electrical tape. Take one of the size M connectors and unscrew the cover from the head. It exposes 2 connections. The short one in the center is going to be your positive. The one that is longer and on the outside is going to be your negative. Wildgame innovations made it easy for me by placing the wiring polarity on the camera by the external port. It wouldn't show up on the pics so you'll have to take my word for it. I separated and stripped the 2 ends of the wires and I selected the striped wire to be my negative wire. Take the cover yo unscrewed and slide it over the wires then thread them through the holes into their respective terminals. I then soldered them into their respective positions and slid the cover back up and screwed it into place. Just a note ... cut the negative wire about an 1/8" shorter than the positive so the wire doesn't get bound up. I then used electrical tape to help make the junction water resistant.

 

[HALOJmpr]

I used about 5' of wire and then went to the opposite end and soldered the positive and negative onto the battery terminals. In hindsight I should have just soldered spade terminals onto the wire. That will be corrected tomorrow and is what I recommend you do. The terminals on the battery dissipate the heat from the soldering iron too quickly and it's hard to make a good bond. Much easier to crimp or solder on spade terminals. I also have bent the terminals up slightly to get better access to them.

 

[HALOJmpr]

Now that that's done you can plug it up to the jack on the camera and it will power up and work .... I tested it and it worked like a charm with the battery meter showing pegged out @ 100%. The Solar charger already has alligator clips attached so it's connection is simply red to positive and black to negative. I wanted to keep the wires separate because the battery, camera and solar panel have more mounting flexibility. If possible the solar panel should face south but your sunlight in that area will dictate where you mount it. There are holes in the mounting bracket so string, zip ties to a limb, screws or a bungee will work. I'll leave that for you guys to figure out based on your mounting situation.

I am going to get a small plastic box/tupperware or something to mount my battery in to give it some weather resistance. I can't head out the the club til next week but I'll report back on performance and longevity when I have more info!

Hope this helps and ya'll can put it to good use!

Paul

 

[Vaughn726]

Thanks for the tutorial. It will be plenty helpful when I start working on my cameras. Batteries do get expensive in a hurry.

 

[HALOJmpr]

Thanks for the tutorial. It will be plenty helpful when I start working on my cameras. Batteries do get expensive in a hurry.

You can also take a camera that's not equipped with the external jack and wire them too. The drawback to that is that you will have to open the case and then determine polarity + - inside the camera. Most of them use good old red and black with the red + and the black - so it's not that hard. If you are starting with a new camera it's easier to llok for one that already has the external jack though.

You can also just buy another rechargeable battery and a trickle charger and just swap them out every 4 months or so. I like the solar because I don't have to think about all that.