The Mothbox has an internal battery that can sample for about 4 nights on its own (22 hours of runtime). BUT maybe you want a SUPER POWERED Mothbox that can last even longer?!

Well, it’s very easy to add solar panels or extra batteries to the Mothbox!

Add a Solar Panel

This is pretty easy to do! Simply plug a DC barrel jack cable from your panel to the charging port.

That’s it!

We talked to the Talentcell people who make the batteries. They said lots of solar panels will work, especially 18V panels up to 60Watts.**

Panels should be max 18V and 60 watts

Add Extra Batteries

This is also quite an easy addition. You can just plug a DC barrel jack cable from the output of one Talentcell battery to the input port of another! Easy as that! You just need to make sure that both batteries are fully charged.

All batteries need to be fully charged if you connect them.

Build a waterproof battery pack

You can make an extra power case to connect to your Mothbox in the field very easily. You just need an additional waterproof case. You can drill a port exactly the same as when you create the input port for your Mothbox.

Add a DC barrel socket to it. Connect a barrel jack plug with a lever nut.

Plug it into the OUT port of an extra Talentcell battery.

Seal up the box and plug it into the input port of your fully charged Mothbox.

Double Battery Pack?

You bet! Again just make sure all the batteries are charged up fully. Use a DC cable jack splitter (one usually comes with your Talentcell battery!)

Plug it into BOTH OUTPUTs of the batteries in your pack.

And you are ready to have a Mothbox that can run for 66 hours! Or 12 nights!

Differentiating between 12V and 24V batteries

The easiest way to tell the difference is by looking at the back of the battery and see what voltage is listed under the input. The 24V one will say 29.4V and the 12V will say 12.6V.

Example of a 12V battery

Example of a 24V battery

Another easy trick is that you’ll notice the 12V batteries don’t list the voltage on their sides, whereas the 24V one does. The 24V battery also has a little “groove” that sticks out further than the 12V one

A reminder that all 12V batteries are charged by a black charger, and all 24V batteries are charged by a white charger!

More information on daisy chaining batteries

Do not charge batteries that are in parallel! It’s ok to keep two batteries daisy chained together in parallel when charging another battery (i.e, the one in your Mothbox), but directly charging (i.e, from a wall plug) batteries in parallel can damage them. Make sure that when you are daisy chaining two or more batteries, the batteries all begin at the same charge level.