# Need advice on Professional's Favorite spotlight power options



## plague (Dec 2, 2011)

Hey guys! A while ago, I picked up a free spotlight on Craigslist. It's a yellow/black Professional's Favorite--appears to be the same as the spotlight in this thread. Anyway, the light came without a charger (hey, it was free! ). Today I stopped by a Batteries Plus store, to have the battery checked (dead as I suspected) and to see what my options are for powering the light. I'm not sure if this is hard on a vehicle battery, but I'm thinking of trying to power it off of my car and skip the battery. I'm a casual spotter and don't need run times longer than a few minutes.
At Batteries Plus, they let me borrow two of these cables. I connected the light (no battery installed in the light) to a 12v outlet in my car and the light came on for a few seconds but quickly faded. No, it didn't kill the car battery :thumbsup: but I couldn't get this to work again. The one lady at Batteries Plus seemed to think this was because hooking up two cables like this would reverse polarity on the male 12v connectors.
This battery (original, I'm guessing) came with the light. Batteries Plus wanted about $35  for a compatible replacement. As I recall, Advance Auto sold this spotlight for $39.99. By the way, after trying to power the light from my car, a Batteries Plus employee hooked up one of their batteries to the spotlight, just to make sure it wasn't something with the light itself. It worked just fine.
Anyway, I'm looking for some advice/pointers. Can this light be powered directly through it's A/C or D/C charging ports (maybe with a cable like this)? If yes, is there a reason for not doing so from a vehicle?

Advice?

Thanks in advance!


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## Rezolution (Dec 6, 2011)

Powering through charge port:
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Most spotlights cannot be powered through the charge ports. Most manuals will warn that damage will result. I have one spotlight that can be powered through the DC charge port, but the DC charge port is the size of a cigarette lighter (not one of the smaller dc charge ports). The only reason that I've tried it is the manual specified that you can run the light through this port.

I recommend trying to dig up the manual for this light and reading whether or not you can power it (and run it) through the DC charging port. The answer will most likely be no.
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Powering through your cig lighter with the SAC-10 cable you linked:
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You could easily set the light up to run off of your car battery through the cigarette lighter (assuming it was a 12V battery that the light originally had and assuming your cig lighter is going to provide 12V to 14V). You would just want to get a cig lighter socket and hook it up correctly to the leads that would attach to where the battery goes inside of the light (don't hook it up with the charging ports). This way, the socket you install will be in place of where the battery would have gone. You can either mount the socket in the battery door with some epoxy or leave it hanging loose, up to you really. Then you could use that male-to-male cable to hook it up to your car. I'm not sure if the cable is fused or not but you'll need to make sure you aren't pulling more current than the fuses will permit. Again, I'd suggest to try to find the original manual and see how many watts the bulb uses.
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