Basket (0)Powering The Mosquito anti-loitering device via battery / solar power
We receive many emails asking if Mosquito can be powered by battery for use in locations where there is no access to 110v 240v power. The answer is yes, but, the batteries will need recharging on a regular basis. This can be a real hassle as that takes time and when dealing with batteries of 35 Ah or more, they are heavy. The best way to power Mosquito via a battery is to connect a solar charging system, to keep the batteries charged.
The following diagram details the equipment required to power Mosquito using a solar power system. The brands used are available in the UK. These brands may be available in other countries, however, the specification of each item is what is important, so these items can be replaced with similar versions from other suppliers in other countries.
This system requires 1 x 12 volt battery as a voltage doubler is used to convert 12v DC to the 24v DC required to run the Mosquito MK4, however, doubling the voltage reduces the power of the battery from 35 Amp hours to around 17.5 Amp hours (approximately 70 hours run time), so we use 2 12v 35 Amp hour batteries wired in parallel that will provide around 140 hours of run time for the Mosquito even if there is no charge received from the solar panel for some reason.
Control of the Mosquito is via the inline 7 day digital timer, which uses a very small amount of power and is the most power efficient method of control.
There is no way to guarantee how many hours each day a solar system such as this will run a Mosquito for, however, in tests in the UK where there is less sun than in North America, South America, Canada, Australia etc. the system ran for 6 hours per day, every day without issue over the 8 month continuous test.
We recommend mounting all the electronic control equipment and batteries within a waterproof secure external switch-gear box or similar. The enclosure should be ventilated as batteries can ‘off gas’ while charging.
