How do you power your fish finder?, Alternative power...

Hey James, How long does that set up last for your fish finder?

With my Lowrance Elite-7ti fishfinder with 7-inch monitor and with brightness turned up to 8 or 9 out of 10:

9.0AH battery lasts all day
5.0AH battery lasts around 6 hours

Nice. Those batteries are much more expensive then the 12 V sealed batteries but boy, that looks like such a slick DYI and you can use that battery for powering a drill for the anchors and of course an auger set up. Once I go electric with the auger, I will definitely follow what you have done to save on weight. My auger is still human powered as part of the exercise aspect of my ice fishing (as well as walking though I do have Smitty that works very well) but human power can only last so man years and then things have to change.

Yes Milwaukee M18 batteries are quite expensive, but consider they are a lot smaller and a lot lot lot lighter than a sealed lead acid (SLA) battery, and with Milwaukee M18 adapter you can at the same time charge your cellphone, GoPro camera, hand-held GPS unit, VHF radio, bluetooth speakers, and everything else in between, etc.

I have kayak fished or ice fished over 10 hours non-stop many times with my above-said fishfinder powered with a Milwaukee M18 9.0ah battery, and the battery never ran out. And yes, my Milwaukee M18 FUEL drill powering my ice auger is using the same M18 batteries. So to me, the cost is worth every penny.:-)

Thanks so much for sharing I think I will be working on one for myself in the near future

Completely agree...once I go electric with the auger (I don't have much else I need the power for when fishing - I go quite light on equipment most of the time). And not to mention, you can actually use the the battery for all the tools for renos

The Garmin Striker 4 draws the battery down by 0.23a per hour.

I removed the stock battery and 4lbs of weight with this mod.

5V USB to 12 volt female cigarette lighter socket

Male cigarette lighter to SAE quick release cable

USB Powerbank 8000mah 5V/2a

All in about $40-$45 including the powerbank. Lasts all day with power to spare.

I have a modified camera bag with the fishfinder in the top half and a battery box/burn bag in the bottom half. I am running a 16ah lithium battery with a 5ah backup. I also have the converter that takes the Ion ice auger battery and outputs 12v power. This setup (without resorting to backups) will last approximately 3 days. There is also a port with a DC-DC buck converter that provides 6v outputs to run the buddy heater fan.

Simrad 7" finder

Transponder Storage (it has summer transponder installed).

Battery box

and Battery

That's awesome. Thanks for sharing.

Just got 12v adapter for my power station. Paid ($15 bucks for 2)

Paid $219 during Christmas holidays for the power station. Attached alligator clips to the adapter ends. It's a 372Wh lithium power station (I believe that's 31ah). I think that should be able to power a 5inch screen for about 60-70hours.

My setup - all in one Browning fishing backpack like this:

This post has been edited by dmaster on Jan 29, 2022 - 02:42 pm

Bottom holds up to 4 standard 3600 boxes:

This post has been edited by dmaster on Jan 29, 2022 - 02:47 pm

And top - 7.2Ahr or 9 AHr battery and fishfinder.