Hardwire SPOT?

[craig]

Has anyone come up with a battery replacement pack that allows you to hardwire your SPOT to a 12v power source? With SPOT casting, it would be nice to remove the battery dependency.

Craig

 

[LandCruiserPhil]

Has anyone come up with a battery replacement pack that allows you to hardwire your SPOT to a 12v power source? With SPOT casting, it would be nice to remove the battery dependency.

Craig

Dont really see the need...I have a lot of time on mine with the original battery.

Here some info from Spot and some valuable undocumented info not available from SPOT.

From SPOT:
· Power ON: approximately 1 year.
· 9-1-1 Alert mode: approximately 7 days (every 5 minutes)
· SPOTcasting tracking mode: approximately 14 days (every 10 minutes)
· SPOTcheck mode: approximately 1900 messages (adjusted for the triple message format)

Other source:
SPOT recommends that you replace the batteries before a trip if you are uncertain about their state of charge, which is good advice. When the ON/OFF indicator LED flashes red at one second intervals, the batteries are down to approximately 30% of their remaining life. That figure is not in the manual; it simply says to replace the batteries when the red LED flashes. I think its something a user could possibly make use of, what that flashing red light really means.
It will also flash red if you put in alkaline batteries instead of lithium. Alkaline batteries will work, according to SPOT, "but for such a short time that (they) do not recommend their use." Because they "do not recommend them, (they) don't provide specifications that describe how long they might work." Given that alkaline AAs, which are ubiquitous, may be all someone might have available in an emergency, I'm not sure I understand why they wouldn't at least let the user know what they might expect for battery life if that's their only choice.