Lets give this a try and see where it goes.
IMO the best battery supply is the ones that the mechanics and home users buy to jump their cars and mowers etc with the usb plug built in. I use the 12 volt side with a home made step down to 6 volts from the 12 volt side. You can make you own if your good with soldering or just buy a 12vdc to 6vdc step down and solder it to you micro usb cable to use it with your X-Sight.
I made mine from scratch using a lm317 2 resistors and perf board. Granted you can step the power down with nothing but a resistor 2w 20ohm but I personally like the lm317 route better as it keeps the voltage steady at 6vdc longer and doesnt give any voltage spikes.
Any and all ideas welcome, I imagine there is something out there already that does this but as I already had all the doo-dads laying around I made my own.

Thoughts and build ideas?

Here is one cheap and easy option being it is already built only requiring soldering you micro usb cable the the supply power supply

this is what i use, its tiny and you only need to cut a USB cable in half and add this inline, still requires soldering, or the redneck twist and tape, comes ready at 5.1v but you can bump it up if needed, i tried mine at 5.1 and i have no issues, but im running it at 6v now.


http://www.castlecreations.com/products/ccbec.html

I'm using a standard recharging device for phones and tablets. While I thought I had an issue with it not supporting the night time requirements of the scope it now appears to be working fine. I ran the scope with it yesterday in the field with 30* temps for 4 hours and it used about half of my supply. The sleep function on our scopes doesn't work when using an external power supply.

Mine is a Anker 79AN7902
6400 m/Ah
output 5V=2A max

I have a Anker Astro E4 13000 M/Ah on order

Those are great batteries but I was looking at the 5vdc versus being able to get the full 6vdc like we do with the 4 aa batteries. I havent run mine with 5vdc but I think it would do ok. I just like to keep the voltage as close to 6vdc as possible.
Thats another reason I like the auto jump boxes because the power is there. I havent checked mine since last night yet but it hasnt beeped at me yet indicating low voltage so add about 16 more hrs to the 103 from yesterday.

Shadow, the vdc from a AA will drop as soon as they get a load, so really your closer to 5v after some use. i would assume the lithium may be a little better. like i said in my post i had no issues with the 5.1v but i know that is a steady supply and will not experience not drop with such a small load.

Don't get me wrong I wasn't trying to poo poo your idea at all, I guess I'm just anal retentive and like to keep electronics as close to the voltage as possible.
Just went out and check my cheap wally world supply and still going strong on the 12vdc side and still have 2 bars left. On the usb side I'm not totally convinced "yet" that it is the best option being that there are 2 different circuits inside. Yes I took it apart and looked. Couldn't resist. Its amazing the amount of power they get out of these thing for such Small batteries.
No matter which way we go with this it will still take some solder, shrink wrap and a little time until someone makes the adapter for the micro usb that we need. There may very well be one out there I haven't bothered to look too hard yet.

I bought a 3400 mAh one at Walmart last night. Had it on for two hours in nv mode and never dropped by even a bar.

Got tired and shut it off. I'll leave it on longer tonight.

I bought bunch of grommets from Oriellys yesterday and couldn't get anything to fit the hole. The USB slot being offset is going to be an issue fo plugging also.

I may try some RTV in a round mold to see if I can make something.

Ok after 130 hrs the external finally poo-pooed. Thats not just a static test either, I was using the menus and playing with it (the SCOPE) HA and just basically running it through the mill every chance I had.
I will change over to the usb side after the battery pack recharges and see what we get from it.
Anyone else have any ideas or input ?

Just because the battery input is 6v, doesn't mean the internals of the device use that input. More likely they're stepped down to what the internals need - probably closer to standard USB voltages/current.

I would be very very careful with building your own circuit for supplying power. It's probably fine, and it will probably work... BUT - I have personally seen such setups work fine for a while, but when used long-term end up frying USB devices (ie: motherboards, etc). True USB spec is a bit dynamic, and automatically adjusts voltage and current supply to match the load the device wants to pull.

For me, I will stick with commercial USB power supplies, purely for this reason. At least until we know more about exactly what power draw the internals need during Power-On and during various operating modes (switching to NV, etc).

I'm keen on suggestions for commercial supplies small enough to mount on a gun, or on the stock. Ideas?

The one I'm using could easily be mounted in a stock ammo pouch. I slip mine in the mesh pocket of my coyote vest.

thoughts on how well this one might work? I like the digital status.

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another reason I like the one I posted is it has a water resistant cover available as well.

I like that. Now I just have to stop paying all my other bills piling up, and I can afford to buy it!

I have one ordered, will post what kind of duration I get from it.

If you have batteries in and power pack plugged into the x sight and configured as a power source, which is the scope running off of? Batteries, power pack, both?

I use rechargable batteries in my x sight. I plugged in the usb power supply, left the batteries in the unit. The batteries were almost dead. I didn't turn the unit on, but left the power on from the usb. I left the scope for one hour, turned the external power off. I turned the unit on, the unit is no longer showing low power on internal batteries. Is the usb recharging my batteries?

if they are rechargeable it might.

when I get the 20000mah I will install some rechargeable and see if it charges from the external power source. it may also be that the sight is reading the external as the main power and would not show batteries as low.

i have checked the x sight and found if you use rechargeable batterys and plug in a usb powere pack it will recharge your internal batterys and run your x sight at the same time.

That's awesome.

I wonder how it detects when you aren't using rechargeable batteries? I don't believe it's a good thing to run current to non rechargeable batteries.

it dont . checked this morning x sight turned of powere pack on. current to battery compartment. is 1.5v so defo charging batterys

well got the power pack today and it came with 68% charge so I hooked it up to the 5x and now I get a usb ext. power supply/usb mass storage? loop

it flashes on and off about 45 seconds to a minute apart.

anyone else have this problem and if so is there a fix?

running the 248 firmware.

Mass-storage loop is fixed in .253, at least
in my scope.


/MKL