Batteries for minicam

[DZT]

I have a small pocket minicam that requires
the use of an AA battery. I was wondering
whether or not I should use alkaline or
cheaper heavy duty batteries. From what I've
read alkalines perform much better than other
batteries throughout their lifetime and also
work better when exposed to heat (pockets)
and cold. I'd like to hear what other people
have to say.

[Brian H]

I think that alkaline type would be better.
If it is real cold you may want to try a
Lithium type AA Cell, but they are costly.

[DZT]

Thanks for the reply. I actually tried out
both heavy duty and alkalines just to see if
there would really be any difference and I'm
surprised how much longer the alkalines
last. I think if I were to use alkaline all
the time I'd save a lot of money because the
heavy duty ones I tried don't even last a
quarter amount of time as the alkalines. I
wonder why they keep selling the heavy duty
batteries when they're not really cost
effective at all.

[diane]

I would like to see X10 come out with a
battery pack twice as deep to accomodate
twice the number fo batteries. This would
allow the use of RECHARGEABLES that
only supply 1.2 volts each.

[hugo moreno]

I'm interested in a completely wireless
video surveillance set of cameras. By
completely wireless I mean no cables to
hook up the cameras to the recording box
and no cables to give them power. With
batteries strong enough to be changed at
least once a month of so. If you do have
something like that, please send me the
information.

Thank you.

[Brian H]

X10 Battery packs are good for 4 hours and
can't be turned on or off by remote control.
Manual switch on the side.

[lee]

You can buy supplies at e.g. Radioshack to
make a home-made battery pack using D
batteries, and connect it to the supplied
battery pack. This will give you more time,
but just more hours, not days. I don't know
about piggyback multiple battery packs
though.

An easy (though not cheap) way to gain a
significant time advantage might be to buy
the large portable powersources that you can
plug household appliances to e.g. when you
are camping.  They can run desklamps,
computers, etc, surely they could keep a
little camera going for awhile.  These
things are basically just really big
rechargeable batteries with 110 outlets
built in.  Of course they are very bulky,
and you would need to have them somewhere
they are easily accessible to you to
recharge, but not easy for someone else to
steal.

[jayjayfkay]

Question! Can a camera be run off of a car
battery by using a cars cigarette lighter
adapter that you can get from Radio Shack
without damaging the Camera?

[Brian H]

Camera power supply is 12 Volts at 80 ma.
If you got the wiring correct it probably
would work.