V-mount to 24VDC Adapter

egproductions

egproductions

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Are there any Vmount Adapters that will boost the voltage of a vmount to 24V? Ultimately looking to power some 100w LEDs from a Vmount (or I guess two vmount).
 
Two batteries in series would give you about 28 to 32 volts fresh off the chargers, can the lights take that much? If so it would be easy to rig up, if your batteries have a built in D tap, you could build it with cables.
 
This would be for the Westcott Skylux. I believe it's 24v but can't find any specs around that and not sure it could handle more than 24v. My v-mounts are the Kayo Maxtar 177wh which have a Dtap in/out.

I've heard the other option is to use a voltage booster such as this (in which case I can just use one v-mount):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product//B01ARRA4BU/ref=twister_dp_update?ie=UTF8&psc=1

However, I'm not very good at soldering cables together and not sure where to buy the proper connection to plug into the westcott. It's a 5 pin connection that screws/locks in.

I would be greatfull for any help to get this little project working.
 
Here is what the wescott connection looks like, Does anyone know what it's called?

73-5-4850-Back-AngleR.jpg
 
The booster shown is a 48 volt output device, way too high. Those devices can also introduce flicker because they often have a bit of a pulsed square wave to them. I see last year you measured the ballast output at 24 volts, so two V mount might work just fine. But I would contact Wescott first and ask them about this, I saw no battery rigs for this light and nothing in the knowledge base.
 
Just FYI, even if you are successful at finding the booster to 24V @100W the V mount battery would not be able to power such a powerful light for more than 1-2 hours depending on how big the battery is. Say if you have a 130wh battery you would be lucky to get 1 hour out of it.
 
Greg_E said:
The booster shown is a 48 volt output device, way too high.
Click to expand...

I can't link the correct one for some reason but if you click on the drop down list on Amazon you can see a few that go from 12 to 24 at difference wattages.

I don't know about the pulsed square wave as you mentioned. I can reach out to westcott but I somewhat doubt they would give me a defintive answer on any of this stuff.

Do you know of a 12v to 24v booster that won't have the square wave pulse?
 
adolgin said:
Just FYI, even if you are successful at finding the booster to 24V @100W the V mount battery would not be able to power such a powerful light for more than 1-2 hours depending on how big the battery is. Say if you have a 130wh battery you would be lucky to get 1 hour out of it.
Click to expand...

That's fine actually. My v-mounts are 177wh 12000mah. I only need it to last about an hour. Doing interview outdoors and would like to use the skylux for a little fill or kicker when needed. Up until now I've had to use a pure sine DC to AC inverter but the setup is a little cumbersome and would ike to iliminate the balast from the chain.
 
Remember there is also a max current that Vlocks can deliver.. the reason they are often used in series in higher draw environments.

S
 
I wonder how long a car based power invertor would last, getting that to connect to multiple batteries would be easy. Run all the batteries in parallel to get the current up. What's the max. current listed on the input side of the ballast? Any pictures of the label on the ballast? I'm guessing it is just a 100-230volt AC to DC convertor and should have a label with all sorts of good info. I seriously doubt it is really a ballast like in an HMI.
 
Use a single V-lock battery on that lamp and in a month or so you'll destroy that battery. It's just too high a draw and you'll ruin the chemistry. You're much better off taking a dual-mount battery bracket and rewiring it from parallel to series. You could stick a limiter on the end to max it out at 24v. If you're not someone comfortable doing such work then I know of no solution other than taking this to someone who does some basic electrical work and he/she can do it for you. It's not real advanced stuff we're talking here.
 
If that thing is really drawing 120watts in the input side, it would be on the order of 4 or 5 times that on the output side. I'm guessing they are using a fairly large power supply to make it last longer.

Now if it is really drawing 100 watts at 24 volts that would be a 4.1 amp draw, that's pretty high for a Dtap connection, most of these are set for 5 amps max. You would need to run the 90w/hr packs as a minimum and that would give you slightly less than an hour run time off the pair. As Mitch said that's going to be a hard life for these batteries.

Before I suggest a solution, I'd ask for more info from Westcott, need to know how much over 24 volts they can take (up to 32-34 volts from a series pair of batteries) and the cut out should be down at around 24 volts. If you run it much lower you start to risk the batteries being really damaged. The manufacturer will probably say that 11.2 to 11.6 is their minimum (per pack), but that's the real working minimum and it takes a lot of life off your packs.

The short of the adapter would be two Dtap cables. Wire the + of one to the - of the second. Wire the plug to the - of the first and the + of the second (that would be your 24 to 34 volts). That's no over or under voltage cut off, and only the fuses in each battery for over current protection. Personally I hate Dtap and would go with battery brackets, but it ups the cost significantly. As Mitch said, it's a pretty easy mod, but I'm still not sure if it is something that you should do. If you up it to 4 batteries per light (2 parallel 2 series), I'd feel more comfortable with the current requirements and longevity of the battery packs... But you could buy a generator for that price in batteries (based off of IDX pricing).
 
Thanks for the advice everyone. There are a few expernsive products on the market that will accept 2-4 v-mounts and output 24+ volts. Other than that I think I'll have someone take two vmount plates and do the whole series thing and add a limiter so that the voltage stays at 24v.
 
IDX makes the ED-424L. It can take up to four V-mount batteries (eight if you use the double-stacking kind) and it has both 12v & 24v outputs. More importantly, the 24v output is a regulated 24v so you don't have to worry about over voltage. The connection is a Lemo-8 so you'd have to get a cable make, and you may be in for some sticker shock when you find out how much that will cost. More sticker shock -- the EB-424L sells for $1160.

Frezzi makes a cheap model, the PA-30B. Two battery slots and it's a 30v output, but it sells for just $279. Knowing Frezzi, you could probably call them up and they'd add a resistor inline circuit to drop the voltage to 24v. But you'll still need the cable and it's a hard life for your V-mount batteries.


If you want to do this cheap, just get a 24v battery and forget about using the V-mounts. You can get a gel cell and automotive charger setup for a few hundred bucks. Or you could ask a company like Bescor to make you a 24v solution. They only list 12v stuff now but they used to regularly offer 24v, and I know they'll do custom stuff for you. Their stuff is very inexpensive and they'll supply the charger as well. See what connector they'd put on the cable coming out of the battery (they used to make them with a 6' cable coming out of it). You can take your light's AC power supply, snip the cable fairly near to where it outputs from the PS to go to the lamp, and solder on a pair of male/female connectors. That way you can unplug the power supply and plug in the battery instead, each delivering 24v.

EDIT: Just notice that autocorrect changed Frezzi to Freeze. In case you couldn't understand what the hell I was talking about!
 
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