Here’s a few tricks to make it work during RV storage…
Dear readers,
I found this interesting question over on RV Tips, and it’s a good exercise on how to do small battery charging while your RV is in storage.
So I bought this cheap small battery to keep my GPS tracker charged over the winter while stored. All seemed fine for the last month until other day when I get a warning saying the battery on the tracker is at 10%.
Check on the unit today and clearly the battery is toast. Brought it home and it’s got like 1.5V and my charger / conditioner unit won’t even recognize it to charge.
I don’t want to leave one of my dual regular batteries out there. Keeping both charged in parallel all the time for longevity sake.
Do I need to buy a deep cycle battery? Of course I lost the Walmart receipt. 🤦♂️💸
Dear Dan,
Be aware that many automatic battery chargers won’t recognize a dead battery. So you have to get the battery voltage up high enough for these “smart” chargers to kick in. Do you have an old Sears 6/2 amp manual battery charger like this one?
That’s what I use to get the voltage up high enough on a dead battery for the computerized automatic charger to recognize it and finish charging. Usually only take 10 minutes or so, but your mileage may vary. So give it a try on your battery, and it might just jumpstart it enough for for smart charger to take over.
How about adding a solar panel?
You’re also going to need a small battery charger running all the time so you don’t discharge the battery down of 0% again. If you’re not close to an electrical outlet then a solar panel is your friend. Here’s what I think would work.
You don’t need a lot of watt-hours per day to provide enough energy for your GPS tracker, so a 10 or 20-watt solar panel with a battery maintenance controller like the one above should do the trick. You can find one on Amazon HERE.
Let’s play safe out there… Mike
You can also get the smart charger to work by being smarter than the charger or outsmarting it. You can use jumper cables from you car with the charger connected. Just a second or two will fool the charger into seeing a battery and start charging it.
I’ve also heard you can use a standard 9-volt battery to jump start a smart charger, but I’ve never tried it. Seems plausible though…
Can that Voltset charger be used for two 6 volt batteries that are in series?
@mike – If you “jump” the dead battery (using some jumper cables) w/ a good (car) battery, Next install the “intelligent” battery maintainer….and THEN remove the jumper cables the maintainer will take over / continue to charge the depleted battery. I’ve done this several times w/ dead motorcycle batteries and tractor batteries….ive been able to recover them all.
How about using an Apple AirTag instead f a GPS tracker? No need for an external battery.
The OP didn’t say what GPS tracker he’s using and the pic doesn’t clearly show the CCAs. The Everstart 1U has CCAs of 230 to 340 (don’t fix on this) divided by 7.5 gives 30 to 45 aH. Using the 50% discharge limit you’re left with 15 to 22 usable aHs.
Am I doing this right?
So how much energy does a HPS tracker use whether it updates every 5 or 30 minutes? Is there anything else that would draw down the battery? Was the battery proper maintained. Did the OP underestimate his battery need?
A small solar panel battery recharger is an excellent suggestion. There is a GPS tracker with its own solar panel built in and it’s test it’s battery will last a year. If. True it would certainly cover the “no sunshine days” days.
BTW, at least for me, the Amazon link to the solar kit did not work.
First off, I made a mistake on the Amazon link but it should work now.
If not, try this: https://a.co/d/acm6jUR
Next, I’m not sure how many Ah a GPS tracker would use, but I can’t imagine it would be more than a few Ah per day. However, I’ll do a little research to be sure.
And yes I’m guessing that little battery would be around 35 to 50 Ah, so it should be able to power that GPS tracker for a week or more, assuming my current usage guess is correct.
But if there’s any other current draw happening in the RV (CO/Smoke detectors, etc…) then it could be drained flat in a few days.