Does anyone know about ARK Portable battery boxes and where to buy them

[Corey]

PS, I totally forgot, with my 7 LED lights I have from Goal Zero, each one came with a short 12v outlet adapter that you plug into a 12v source like on the side of the ArkPac or your rigs 12v outlet, and then you can plug the small plug from the LED lamp into the adapter.
Pretty sure it is this one, so no worries if you have Goal Zero LED lights to power like I do.
http://www.goalzero.com/shop/p/34/Male-Cigarette-to-Output-6-0mm-Adapter/5:7/

 

[Corey]

I have another question on this unit.
It states if using a solar panel to top off the battery you must use a charge controller.
http://arkusatest.customercommunity.com.au/Solar-Power#ChoosingASolarPanel

I run the Brunton one underneath the hood of my FJ that goes between the stock battery and the plug that the Powerfilm solar panel I have hooks up to.
How does one hook it up to the ArkPac?
Is there a charge controller out there that will interface with the ArkPac, or will one have to buy/build special plugs/adapters to get this to work?

I am ready to buy one of these right now, but I want to know all of the extra stuff I will need to recharge it out in the field.

 

[mcieplinski]

Hi All - how does this unit compare to GoalZero 350 with inverter? Is the Ark's capacity larger than GZ350?

 

[mhiscox]

Hi, Corey,

Sorry for the delay in getting this information posted.

Last question first . . . there's some goofiness because the input to charge the ArkPak is 24 volts DC. Both the AC charger and the optional DC (car) charger output 24 volts. I looked up your charge controller and it (totally as expected) outputs 12 volts. So you can't directly hook the Bruton up to the charging input on the ArkPak. It might be possible to connect somehow to the battery cables so the 12 volts went in that way, but that would be a bit of a kludge.

The optional ArkPak DC-to-DC (12 to 24V) car charger has a female power plug (lighter-type), so the "right" way would be to buy the car charger and then replace the ring terminals on the end of the Brunton's cable with the female lighter receptacle. When using the solar panel, plug the small male cable end of the ArkPak DC charger into the Arkpak and plug the big male lighter end into the female socket you just put on the end of the controller. That should work a treat, as the charging program built into the ArkPak is pretty sophisticated.

The expense of having to buy the DC charger to use your solar controller won't seem so bad if you'll also be connecting the ArkPak charger to an in-car power port to charge the battery, which you'd want to routinely do while driving.

As for the shortcomings raised in the forums . . . I don't understand the most negative of the comments. The case is no great piece of art--it's thin black plastic that fits the innards as tightly as possible. I assume the goal was to make it as small and light as needed for the job, and that's what it is. The cover for the controls seems a bit flimsy because it's made of the same thin black plastic, but the handles are secure and the case is protective enough. The key point is that I'm not sure you'd want to carry, or pay for, anything more elegant.

The ArkPak makes some noise, but it seems to me a close match to a chest-type compressor refrigerator in volume. It's basically cooling fan noise, and about equivalent to what I have on my other inverters, which are expensive Prosine units. I don't know what was with the guy who had the deafening one; mine "whirs," sometimes noticeably, but you'd have to be really sensitive to be bothered by it when awake, and most people could sleep with it close by. (And given that it's portable, if you're a light sleeper, just move it away from your head.)

The smallish modified sine wave inverter is the weakest link of the product, in my opinion, but it's not a bad inverter and it doesn't seem any more prone to causing troubles than any of them. (And, like the case, if the inverter was bigger and heavier, so would the overall package, so it's just a design choice.) Different equipment reacts differently, but most anything you plug in that gets current through a separate charger, like a laptop or tablet should be happy. I don't have an iPhone, so I can't comment directly on that specific issue. I certainly have no problems charging my outdated LG phone off the USB connector.

The ArkPak wasn't designed to be perfect in all ways, but if you look at it as a couple of days of camping electricity in a transportable box, it'll be pretty appealing for certain users.

 

[mhiscox]

Hi All - how does this unit compare to GoalZero 350 with inverter? Is the Ark's capacity larger than GZ350?

Nothing wrong with the Goal Zero units, but the ArkPak supplies 130 amp-hours vs. 33 for the Goal Zero 350. 33 AH of capacity discharged to the "don't go below" 50%, means you'd have 16.5 amp-hours available, which is plenty for phones and laptops, but likely not enough to get you through a day of refrigerator use.

Even the $1400 Goal Zero 1250 Yeti, which is a much bigger unit than the ArkPak, only has a 100 amp hour battery. But it has nicer connections and a way bigger and better 1200 watt pure sine wave inverter. So there's a clear cut choice, with the Goal Zero stuff being more solar and AC outlet-oriented in a more elegantly-styled package, whereas the ArkPak is basically reasonably portable way to carry a honking big 130 AH battery around with some decent interfaces to get power in and out of it.

 

[mcieplinski]

Nothing wrong with the Goal Zero units, but the ArkPak supplies 130 amp-hours vs. 33 for the Goal Zero 350. 33 AH of capacity discharged to the "don't go below" 50%, means you'd have 16.5 amp-hours available, which is plenty for phones and laptops, but likely not enough to get you through a day of refrigerator use.

Even the $1400 Goal Zero 1250 Yeti, which is a much bigger unit than the ArkPak, only has a 100 amp hour battery. But it has nicer connections and a way bigger and better 1200 watt pure sine wave inverter. So there's a clear cut choice, with the Goal Zero stuff being more solar and AC outlet-oriented in a more elegantly-styled package, whereas the ArkPak is basically reasonably portable way to carry a honking big 130 AH battery around with some decent interfaces to get power in and out of it.

Thanks a lot for insight!!!

 

[mcieplinski]

Has anyone researched whether you can connect PowerFilm solar panels to this battery pack? Thanks for all guidance!

 

[Corey]

Mike, thank you very much for the information.
Since this is so much more powerful than my now dead Goal Zero Ranger 350 battery/inverter, I do not think I would need to recharge it via solar while out camping with it.
My Powerfilm is mainly to keep the rigs stock battery topped off since I am powering the ARB fridge with it.

The Goal Zero was mainly for running seven of their LED lanterns, and recharging camera batteries.
I would be doing the same with the Ark, and possibly recharging the battery that is built into my new Mr Heater digital shower.

But now that optional 12v cable that you can get with the Ark will allow my rigs 12v system to recharge the Ark just in case it gets run down a bit?

I did email Brett at Ark today, but have not heard anything back from them.
Looks like their site is still not setup to allow you to shop there to buy one of these, or I would have ordered one today, then hit Sears up for a battery.
What 12v group 31 did you got with, the Sears Platinum Die Hard AGM?
Car or marine one?
I see a few different ones on their website.

Thanks again...

 

[mcieplinski]

Nothing wrong with the Goal Zero units, but the ArkPak supplies 130 amp-hours vs. 33 for the Goal Zero 350. 33 AH of capacity discharged to the "don't go below" 50%, means you'd have 16.5 amp-hours available, which is plenty for phones and laptops, but likely not enough to get you through a day of refrigerator use.

Even the $1400 Goal Zero 1250 Yeti, which is a much bigger unit than the ArkPak, only has a 100 amp hour battery. But it has nicer connections and a way bigger and better 1200 watt pure sine wave inverter. So there's a clear cut choice, with the Goal Zero stuff being more solar and AC outlet-oriented in a more elegantly-styled package, whereas the ArkPak is basically reasonably portable way to carry a honking big 130 AH battery around with some decent interfaces to get power in and out of it.

Just a quick question - what happens if you go below 50% charge on Goal Zero 350?

 

[mhiscox]

Has anyone researched whether you can connect PowerFilm solar panels to this battery pack? Thanks for all guidance!

It looks to me like the PowerFilm foldable panels even come with the adapter that would accept the big end of the ArkPak DC to DC car charger, so yeah, it'll work for sure.

And I don't want to mislead anyone . . . there are multiple inputs that let you put 12 volt back into the battery without the ArkPak adapters. You could even just connect fused wires from your vehicle battery to an Anderson connector and plug into the connector on one end of the ArkPak, or you could connect cables directly to the stud terminals on the other end. Where the problem comes in is that it's only the 24 volt input that connects to the ArkPak's charger, so only charging current that goes in through the input (which is to say, comes from the ArkPak AC or DC chargers) gives the battery the advantage of the seven-stage intelligent charging.

How much this limits you is sort of a personal decision. My battery is a nice DieHard Platinum Marine AGM that, like all AGMs, profits a lot from multistage charging, so I'm going to be using the adapters all the time. If you charge from the vehicle directly, the voltage isn't optimal and the control isn't there for optimum battery life. Instead of the bulk charge/absorption charge/float charge cycles the charger will go through for an AGM in the ArkPak, it's all basically bulk charge and it would be easy to overcharge the batteries with a straight connection to the alternator. The same would be true if using a solar panel without an intervening solar charge controller.

So the bottom line on this, according to my understanding, is that you can easily charge the 12 volt battery you put in the ArkPak straight from a vehicle alternator or power port or from a solar panel that outputs nominal 12 volt, but you risk shortening its life by having no intervening control of the charging process. You could get around this by using a sufficiently "smart" separate battery charger in line from the vehicle to the ArkPak connectors, but that introduces a new piece of equipment. (Of course, using the car adapter adds another piece of equipment, but the advantage is that the car adapter is fairly small and simple and, particularly, everything about the charging will be reported on the ArkPak's screen.)

Given that they're offering the DC charger as part of the sale package, that's undoubtedly the easiest way to go. But you can find lots of other ways to make it work, although many won't be as good for the battery you stick in the ArkPak.

 

[mhiscox]

Just a quick question - what happens if you go below 50% charge on Goal Zero 350?

It's got nothing to do with Goal Zero . . . the rule of thumb for retaining good life for any AGM (absorbed glass mat) deep cycle battery is not to discharge it below 50%, which equals a voltage of about 12.2 volts. For flooded cells, the rule of thumb is not to go below 70%.

Nothing horrible happens immediately with AGMs if you ignore this and discharge them deeper. But it does mean that instead of getting perhaps 1500 charge/discharge cycles, you might get only 500. Now getting only a third of the battery life seems a terrible situation, but even 500 cycles is enough to take your truck out once a week for ten years, and if I got seven years out of an AGM I'd be pretty happy, so the whole issue is perhaps not all that relevant. Suffice to say that the deeper the discharge percentage (and/or the higher the discharge rate, another concern) the quicker your batteries die. But you may not care.

Nothing horrible happens immediately with flooded cells, either, but they are much less pleased than AGMs to be deeply discharged and then brought back. As an extreme case, consider that an AGM battery will usually come back from dozens of total discharges, but a flooded cell battery might be toast after just one or two total discharges.

The internet is full of everything you might care to know about discharge cycles and rates and so on, but you can get by pretty well with the general knowledge that your expensive batteries will most likely give you their money's worth if you avoid both deep discharges and fast discharges and use a charger that's smart enough to optimize the charging process.

 

[Corey]

Brett from ArkPac got back to me, the USA site is live, and I will be placing my order shortly.
And indeed the DC to DC charger comes free for a limited time.
Guess I best order after I post this

http://www.arkportablepower.com/

Thanks Mike, will visit Sears at a later date.
So from what I read here, when not using the unit you can leave it hooked up at home to your 110v line all the time to keep it topped off?
I also have a bunch of Powerfilm connecters I will have to look over.
Not really sure though if I will really need to charge this up in the field as I mentioned earlier it is mainly going to be for running lights and charging cameras up.

 

[mhiscox]

So from what I read here, when not using the unit you can leave it hooked up at home to your 110v line all the time to keep it topped off?

You can. That's a big advantage of a "smart" charger, in that it will provide the float charging needed to keep an AGM battery at 100% without overcharging.

That said, though, a good AGM's rate of self-discharge is so low, 1-2 percent a month for a new one, that it probably doesn't matter whether you keep it plugged in or not. I charge my ArkPak after any significant use and then put it on the shelf disconnected.

 

[mcieplinski]

It's got nothing to do with Goal Zero . . . the rule of thumb for retaining good life for any AGM (absorbed glass mat) deep cycle battery is not to discharge it below 50%, which equals a voltage of about 12.2 volts. For flooded cells, the rule of thumb is not to go below 70%.

Nothing horrible happens immediately with AGMs if you ignore this and discharge them deeper. But it does mean that instead of getting perhaps 1500 charge/discharge cycles, you might get only 500. Now getting only a third of the battery life seems a terrible situation, but even 500 cycles is enough to take your truck out once a week for ten years, and if I got seven years out of an AGM I'd be pretty happy, so the whole issue is perhaps not all that relevant. Suffice to say that the deeper the discharge percentage (and/or the higher the discharge rate, another concern) the quicker your batteries die. But you may not care.

Nothing horrible happens immediately with flooded cells, either, but they are much less pleased than AGMs to be deeply discharged and then brought back. As an extreme case, consider that an AGM battery will usually come back from dozens of total discharges, but a flooded cell battery might be toast after just one or two total discharges.

The internet is full of everything you might care to know about discharge cycles and rates and so on, but you can get by pretty well with the general knowledge that your expensive batteries will most likely give you their money's worth if you avoid both deep discharges and fast discharges and use a charger that's smart enough to optimize the charging process.

Thanks a lot for this advice. I believe that the battery pack is coming without an actual battery and thus do you have any recommendations???

 

[Brett From Ark]

Ark Pak

Hi Its Brett From Ark, all the way from Australia (the land down under)

if any one has any questions about the Ark Pak you can contact me on my email address which my colleague Martin has already posted up, but just in case you missed it the address is brett@arkcorporation.com

Happy to answer any questions you have at all no matter how silly you think the question is it's always better to ask the question and know the correct answer then not ask the question and you still don't know what the correct answer is.

so please ask away any questions you have

Best Regards

Brett From Ark