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Topic: Feedback on 10.0Ah Nocqua Pro Power Kit or WS 15Ah lithium battery?  (Read 6563 times)

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JasonM

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Note: Updated title to reflect that I'm now considering the Wilderness Systems 17Ah battery instead

As I slip deeper and deeper into this kayak fishing obsession, I'm evidently losing my focus on cost control. The latest examples are Lowrance Hook 4 FF and a 10.0Ah Nocqua Pro Power Kit (https://nocqua.com/product/pro-power-kit/). I've read countless horror stories about lithium ion batteries, including a few stories including kayaks, but I can't find a single horror story about one of the Nocqua kits. I also haven't seen an overwhelming number of "this thing is awesome!" product reviews. The specs sound great, including not having to do any extra work building a waterproof kit box. The price was pretty high ($120 with free shipping), but once I started adding up the costs of a good 9+ Ah deep cycle battery, a Battery Tender Jr., a dry box and various wiring fittings to go along with it, that also added up and the whole package was going to weigh about eight pounds and wouldn't have a warranty on the whole package.

Both the fish finder and the Nocqua battery are now ordered and on the way, so I'm obviously asking for feedback after ordering when I should have done it before. With that in mind, has anyone used that 10.0Ah Nocqua battery and has feedback on it?
« Last Edit: July 20, 2017, 10:11:26 AM by JasonM »


Arctic Okie

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following. I hear they're great, but every review I've seen has been in warmer states and doesn't get very cold. I'm curious how they hold up in colder weather.


Tinker

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I thought about the Nocqua  - there's a bit of chatter about them in the NCKA boards - but they are not waterproof, they are water-resistant, and in my mind that difference means a battery box is required.
I expected the worst, but it was worse than I expected...


JasonM

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That's true about "waterproof" versus "water resistant" on the Nocqua battery. When researching it, I found that a lot of the dry boxes that are normally used for battery boxes either wouldn't pass the test for meeting industry standards for "waterproof" as they come from the factory or wouldn't after they are modified for use with batteries. A fairly cheap dry box that I bought to put my wallet, phone and keys into didn't even keep water out when I held the empty box down into a bucket of water for less than a minute. I got it to pass that test with a little effort, but I'll likely still test it a couples times a year to make sure it still keeps water out. On the Nocqua battery, the factory rubber wrap around the cells and seal where the cord comes out seems to be a lot more likely to resist water than most homemade solutions that I've seen, but there are definitely wear scenarios that could eventually compromise the water barriers at one more more places. I doubt that that there are many DIY folks out there who could do a better job with sealing things up than that design does. I'm sure I'm not one of those who can. I was reassured a bit when I heard that Nocqua had worked with Lowrance on testing for kayak/SUP use, but I didn't see any specific references to water resistance testing.

I think it would be a bit risky for any manufacturer of a battery like this to claim it to be completely waterproof. As an example, watch manufacturers aren't even allowed to claim that their diving watches are waterproof so they have to reset to saying "water resistant to xxx meter or xx atmospheres." Until we start seeing that or IPxx testing ratings, "water resistant" is likely as good as we're going to get.

I'll report back in once I have both the FF and the battery in use for a couple cycles.


JasonM

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Evidently the Nocqua battery that I thought was on the way isn't. I just got a back order notification email with no ETA, so I cancelled the order. I also see that Austin Kayak has the Wilderness Systems 15Ah battery in stock, so I'm considering ordering that instead. I had the USB adapter added to my order for the Nocqua battery, and the Wilderness Systems battery has USB ports on it already, so it's effectively a bit cheaper than the Nocqua on top of offering 5Ah more power. Hmm... decisions, decisions...


JasonM

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Am I breaking new ground here so no one else has tried either of these batteries, or did I ask this in such a n00b way that it would take too long to explain why I'm doing it wrong?  ;D

Either way, the Wilderness systems 15Ah battery will be to me on Thursday, so I should be able to try it out with the Lowrance Hook 4 this weekend.


JasonM

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I got the Wilderness Systems battery today. I had a few chargers that worked fine to charge it. The problem is that it turns off instantly when I try to power on my Lowrance Hook 4 fish finder. According to WS website, that means that my fish finder is trying to pull too much current. I verified that it will charge my cell phone successfully from one of the 5V USB ports.

With this in mind, I rigged up the necessary wiring, even using the WS power cable, and powered the fish finder off my riding lawnmower battery to make sure there was no problem with the fish finder. It powered up and ran demo mode just fine. That made me wonder about the actual amperage that it was pulling, so I added my Fluke multimeter into the wiring loop to measure the current draw. The Fluke meter is fairly high end and updates current draw very quickly. The highest current draw displayed was 502 mA and most of the time it was pulling around 330 mA, so was nowhere near the 1A limit for the WS battery.

The battery currently shows at around 60% charged (three lights out of five) and I'm going to charge it the rest of the way to try again. I have no confidence that it's going to work on a full charge, though. I tried to call Wilderness Systems to talk about the problem at 1:59PM Pacific time today but got voicemail. Then I noticed that their customer service is only available until 5:00pm Eastern time, so evidently they didn't want to answer 1 minute from quitting time. Now I get to wait until Monday, and I had blocked out Sunday for kayak fishing all day using my fish finder so I would finally not be fishing blind...  ::)

Deptrai, have you had any problems like this? Do you (or anyone else) know of any way to fix it, other than send it back to WS?


hdpwipmonkey

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I don't have any experience with that particular battery but when using my Anker battery sometimes the fish finder wouldn't power on.  Sometimes I would have to try multiple times to get it to power up.  I figured it was probably some type of power draw issue during power up but I didn't spend too much time troubleshooting it.  I just went to a regular SLA battery.  Now it powers up every time.  My fish finder is also a Lowrance.  Its the Elite 4 HDI.
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JasonM

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Much to my surprise, the fish finder turned on just fine with the battery fully charged. Even with multiple cycles turning it on and off, it kept working fine. I'm going to test it for a few hours of use this weekend, and then turn it off and back on once the battery has been drained a bit. If the initial hiccup was a one-time thing, then no big deal. If it won't turn on reliably with the battery below half charge, the battery is getting returned. I didn't pay $125 for a battery that doesn't work consistently.


Tinker

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When checking the amp draw did you check the battery voltage at the Hook head unit?  I don't know what the voltage is at 60% charge on that battery, but the Hook will shut itself off at low voltage.
I expected the worst, but it was worse than I expected...


MonkeyFist

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When checking the amp draw did you check the battery voltage at the Hook head unit?  I don't know what the voltage is at 60% charge on that battery, but the Hook will shut itself off at low voltage.

My Hook 5 ran until the battery was at 6.? something something volts.
I was really surprised at how long it powered the unit.
I expected it to shut off when it dropped below 10v.
The oldest of my 12v 7Ah SLA batteries.



JasonM

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I ran the Hook 4 fish finder about four hours yesterday, and all five lights still lit up on the battery so it thought it was still fully charged. The fish finder would start back up with no problem. I decided not to charge the battery last night so I could run it a few more hours today. After about four hours more today, four out of five lights lit up and as soon as I hit the power button on the fish finder the battery shuts off.

Tinker, the WS battery put out right at 12.3 volts with three out of five lights (approximately 60% charge) and with five out of five lit (full charge). It's not the fish finder that is turning off. It's the battery. At any less than a full charge, when I touch the power button on the fish finder, the battery shuts off (voltage drops to zero and the lights on the battery go off).

Deptrai, if you happen to have the opportunity to see if your battery also does the auto-shutoff when you try to turn on your fish finder when the battery isn't at full charge, I'd appreciate it. If it run your Dragonfly 7 Pro at less than a full charge without shutting off, then I might have just gotten a bad one. With the absence of information, I don't know if this one that I have is the only one with the problem or if it's going to be common with these batteries. With that in mind, if Wilderness Systems asks me to send it back to them I'll likely do so, but I'm worried that the next one will do the same.

Looks like I'm going to be talking with Wilderness Systems in the morning. If not for this dumb turning off issue, the battery would be wonderful.


Tinker

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Jason, you might also ask the question over on the NCKA forum.  There were quite a few early adopters on the WS battery down South.
I expected the worst, but it was worse than I expected...


JasonM

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Jason, you might also ask the question over on the NCKA forum.  There were quite a few early adopters on the WS battery down South.
Will do. Thanks for the idea.


JasonM

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Couple more details to add here...

First, when I tried it yesterday with 4/5 lights showing (so ~80% charge) and it immediately shut down when I touched the fish finder power button, I just disconnected all of the cords and closed the seals on each port. I decided to try it again this morning before I called Wilderness Systems and the battery was completely dead. It wouldn't turn on at all. After connecting it to the charger for a couple minutes, it would turn on and would only show 1/5 lights (so very low charge). I'm not really sure how that happened with nothing connected to it.

I called Wilderness Systems after that and the tech quickly said that it sounded like a defective battery, and there they had a few with similar issues in the first batch but that had very few calls about the batteries recently. His suggestion was just to return it to Austin Kayak and have it replaced, so that's what I am doing. Austin Kayak customer service was awesome, as always, and I got a prepaid shipping label emailed to me within minutes. The battery is on its way back to Austin Kayak now and they expect to get their new shipment in on Thursday, so the replacement will be guaranteed to be a newer production batch.

I'll report back here once I get the replacement and try it out. It will likely be multiple weeks, though, as I won't have it before this coming weekend and the three weekends following will be consumed with rifle competition both days of all three weekends.