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Abstract question about audio... OPINIONS?

ConcepTrs913

Veteran CEG'er
Joined
Feb 18, 2006
Messages
683
Location
Hoffman Estates, Illinois
If some of you saw I posted pictures of a radio toolbox that I made for my father for his work. I have an alpine radio hooked up to it and he powers it up every time he gets in his tractor at work by plugging it into a 12 volt source. The problem here is that when he unplugs it for the day and puts it in his locker he loses all his bass/treble/personal settings and presets...

Obviously I have the constant and accessory wire tapped together because that is the only way to do it, but I have a question that I am not sure the answer of. What if I had a 12 volt battery tapped into the constant wire in order to keep the settings and such? I know it would work theoretically, but my question is how long would this last?

If that is not possible using a battery, does anyone else have any other ideas?
 
Depends on what size battery you're going to put in. The current draw to maintain volatile memory is extremely small, 10's of milliamps. So any reasonably sized battery could last weeks, maybe months.
 
What battery size would you suggest?

A 12V battery from a backup battery would do nicely... Might be a little beefy, but it'll be a good battery... I don't know if you could run it in parallel with your current setup, or if you'd need to isolate... I'd think you'd have to isolate it just to make sure nothing bad would happen...
 
Kinda of depends on how light and portable you want it to be. Do you want it to rechargable. My first thought would be 2 6V flashlight batteries run in series. But not sure off the top of my head what kind of amperage these are capable of putting out. This would be reletivly light and could just buy replacements when you loose a charge.


A heavier option but perhaps a better choice would be a car batter pack. You can take it apart and have the charger for it included in the tool box. That way when the battery runs low he can just charge it over night with a wall outlet.
 
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