Dear lord…
Anyway…I have a similar system that keeps motorhome starting batteries topped off and ready to go with a 100W panel and controller on two engine starting batteries for a 8.1L gas V8. It could easily power a dash cam.
I like the black frame panels, and renogy makes a super cheap charge controller for lead acid, all in maybe a couple a hundred, and it works just killer.
In hindsight, with a larger lifepo4 house battery I would likely choose a trickle start or similar and forego the solar panel for the starting batteries.
Chris, I don't question that your 100W panel has the capacity to do that you describe. But when you say "it" could easily power a dash camera I'm not sure what power source you refer to...... your starter batteries maybe..? I'm guessing here, quite possibly due to my ignorance, because your starter batter
ies are a "they," and your solar panel is an "it."
And of course that solar panel can't power the dash camera at night.
Then you reference a LiFEPO4 house battery. Is that your "it" and what powers the camera in your scenario?
And when you say were you to do it again you'd probably just (I think you mean) trickle charge (not start) your starting batteries?
If so I assume you'd introduce shore power to energize that tricke charger that I want to be able to forgoe.
This said, I like the black frame solar panels too...they go well with my black colored top and roof rack.
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Let me start over. Right now I tricke charge 24/7 from shore power. (Yes, I know trickle charging need not be daily, let alone continual.) I want that around the clock ability to also run a 4.2W @ 12V dash camera without shore power given my 4 season climate, 41 degree longitude and starter batteries whose size is linked in my OP.
It would seem to me--and you can certainly poke at my wishes--that said abilities would come from solar power charging some house battery that has the capacity to run the camera and trickle charge the starter batteries day or night. And yet it has been hard for me to find tech to trickle charge a starter battery from a house battery, especially since the AMP- and TRIK-L-START no longer seem to be manufactured.
Much that I don't wish to make a
Rube Goldberg machine out of my vehicle, I'm inclined to buy an inverter and plug in a shore trickle charger to it if I in fact effect this project at all.
I'm sure DC to DC converters can be rigged to work opposite to their normal charging of house battereis from starter when the alternator's running, I just don't know how.
