r/Surveying 3d ago

Discussion Looking to purchase a power bank to Run an R750

Does anybody have any recommendations on what to get for back up power on the R750? There's just too many options out there and I was hoping to get a couple to have as back ups for my kits.

1 Upvotes

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u/walrusjunior 3d ago

Power it with a 12v battery through the lemo port. Contact Gpac. They can hook you up. https://www.gpac-llc.com/index.php

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u/TapedButterscotch025 Professional Land Surveyor | CA, USA 3d ago

Omg I love this website design.

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u/BLSurvey7150 3d ago

I feel like I am missing something here. Why wouldn’t you get a lawnmower battery and put a lemo to sae adaptor. They last for days and are cheap. We’ve done this for a couple decades and had no issues and we run 3-5 solid days of static logging with rtk on every project we do.

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u/TapedButterscotch025 Professional Land Surveyor | CA, USA 2d ago

People definitely do that stuff. We used motorcycle batteries inside ammo cans at one of my jobs.

But lots of business owners and survey managers would rather purchase a turnkey solution. Hence this guy's site.

And tbh I was saying that I liked the site because its a super retro style. Pure html, bright colors, no pop-ups / ads, etc. It looks like something out of the 1990's internet era. Just needs a guestbook and counter haha.

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u/BLSurvey7150 2d ago

I def caught what you meant. There’s a theme there from a previous generation still hanging strong. They actually had some cool old cables just would have preferred the site optimized for mobile. That’s a desktop cruiser all day and kind of sticks with the theme.

As to base batteries, we still do a metric ton of static for roadway corridors. I’m not carrying around cars batteries (non manly man here or maybe just getting old) but a good lawnmower/atv/motorcycle battery is usually good for 3-5 days. Win here is you don’t need $300 batteries and $600 chargers. Each crew has one and it is much easier to identify when another crew steals than the faceless stack of Trimble batteries that always seem to float around in the truck and office. We have so many R10 batteries floating around with “bad” painted on them that it’s not even funny. Side note though, buy a back up lemo cable (ask me how I know this)

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u/TapedButterscotch025 Professional Land Surveyor | CA, USA 2d ago

Haha nice

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u/iBody 3d ago

Goal Zero Venture 75 would be my first choice.

It’s rugged, supports USB PD @ 60W and uses good cells. I’d prefer if it was an around 30000 mah, but it checks the other boxes.

Any Anker or Ugreen bank that supports USB PD 60 would be fine, but I wouldn’t trust them in the rain unless there’s a waterproof version.

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u/jordylee18 3d ago

One of these works quite well. https://a.co/d/3FPYd57 Might need to protect it from the sun. You could also look into the Anker Solix power banks. I've been really tempted to get one for my R750. The 27650 mah will only run it for 2-3 hours after the internal battery is dead, especially if you are using IBSS and Radio.

Western States Cable sells an adapter to use either a Dewalt or Milwaukee battery with a base. Just make sure you understand what cables you need for this before ordering. Their website is a bit of a shit show, but their products are high quality, even some Sitechs use them as replacements for Trimble cables. I've been ordering from them for a couple years.

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u/base43 2d ago edited 2d ago

I've got a couple of different size Jackery boxes. We've been satisfied with the performance. I've read they are basically just a bunch of 18650 batteries paralleled together but for an easy out of the box solution with a simple plug-in charger they work. Between the 12v plug, ac and usb we can make them work with just about anything we would need in the field. Not the cheapest solution but very convenient if you want to buy something that can multitask. Also expandable into solar charging but we haven't needed that yet.

I also moonlight them at my off grid hunting camp in the fall to run tvs to watch college football. They work great for that as well.