Camera battery supply

[psychlist]

Please excuse my total ignorance of electronics.Does a 3.2Ah battery supply 3.2 amps for 1 hour or 1 amp for 3.2 hours?Or nothing like that!
Specifically,if I cut off the car adapter of this camera which is 5 volt 500mA & attach straight to a 6 volt 3.2Ah battery,would it work or damage it?

[David]

The ampere hour rating is broadly what you say. Your battery should be capable of supplying 3.2A for an hour, 1.6A for two hours, and so on. Treat this as no more than a rough rule of thumb, however.

I would not have thought that running the camera straight off the battery would cause too many problems (and in any case the cameras seem cheap enough to experiment with), but if you wanted to make sure that the camera does not get overloaded at the power input, put one or two 1 - 2 amp rated diodes in series with the battery (you will easily see which way the diode has to go round - it will only work one way!) Each diode will then drop about 0.7-0.8V, making the output from the battery nearer to the output from the car adapter.

[magpie]

I like what you are proposing .I have looked at your link, and it seems to me the way I would go about it is a bit different from what has been suggested. By what I see, it is the charge from the lighter socket in the car that keeps the battery in the unit active, and the small battery in the unit, is only for when stationary [ ignition off ].That being said, I would not cut off the end that goes into the car, but would retain it, and purchase something that can be adapted to maintain the integrity of the camera for future use. Maplin have what you want, and you can cut the end off but still put a 12v battery on the wires. Perhaps you could experiment with dry cells...say two 6v cells in series.