Can I run my livescope black box and graph off a 18v Milwaukee drill battery heard it gives a better picture

yes you can actually run the graph and box off of one. I use a 9AH DeWalt 20V

better picture.........not sure to be honest

Ok thanks I think I'm gonna go the Milwaukee battery so I don't have to worry about my cranking battery going dead

I’m running a ultra 106sv and Livescope on a Milwaukee 18v 12ah and haven’t had any problems. I’m getting over 6 hours run time with the 12ah.
You will need to have a common ground wire connected to all your devices that are networked for them to share data.

I run both my units and livescope off my main engine battery. I usually fish 10 hrs on average each time out and never have any issues.

I must have a power hungry system. I ran a hds gen2 12 and a 122 ultra with lvs32 for 3 hours today and it dropped a brand new 50ah lithium down to 60%. I bought the lithium thinking that I could get a few trips on a single charge, not looking promising right now!

I finally got out to try the Milwaukee battery i got about 3.5 hours on a 5ah battery so I just need to take 2 with me and I think I will be fine

You might have something going on. I have a Group 27 Northstar AGM for my engine and electronics. Its a beast of a battery in my opinion. I also run my power poles and hydraulic jackplate off of it as well. Two echomap ultras plus Livescope. These are wired on a dedicated harness strait to the engine battery. If you are pulling your power for your units off of wiring to other accessories you might want to consider changing it. Run your Lowrance off of your engine battery and the Garmin stuff off of the lithium might be something to consider trying.

Are you using a charger of putting the Li battery up to 100% to begin with? You should check the voltage spec for the battery you have, and check that it's really getting to 100% charge (via voltage reading with charger off).

Apparently I do! Drained the 50ah in 7 hours running the 122, gls10. I had my gen2 Lowrance on 1/3 of the time, but even adding up what they are “supposed” to pull each, I died way too quickly. Has to be the Garmin, never had an issue with the lowrances. Time to troubleshoot!

It’s not a fancy charger, but it is made for lipo4’s. The ionic app said 100%, it might have been lying because the charger said that it wasn’t full yet. I went by their app.

I think the gls 10 is pulling more amps than it’s supposed to, I just have to figure out a way to read it. I think the ionics app might show me the amount of draw real time, but it’ll be a few days before I can verify it.

With the low time you had the equipment on, I agree something is going on. The Li battery will specify voltage for a full charge, so you could double-check that with a digital voltmeter. Many basic digital voltmeters have the ability to read amperage at smaller levels, typically limited to 10A. Therefore, if you power on only the Garmin with the battery connection made temporarily through the DVM, you'll be able to make a rather accurate reading of amperage. Contact me if you need more info on doing this.

Update: I looked up the Ultra 122sv and found the spec is 26W, which is under 2A on a Li battery typically. Amperage will rise a bit as the battery depletes, but even at 12V, that's only 2.17 Amps. That's comparable to your Lowrance unit.

Flippin, have you ever heard of a battery (I’m trying to think of the proper word or phrase) become stronger or have better performance after a few uses/cycles? There was some literature someplace with the ionics that said something to this extent, seemed very odd to me; but I have no history with lithiums.

I am not knowledgeable enough about the Li Iron Phosphate technology to say either way. I'd think if there is any difference it would likely be minor, not enough to explain the rapid drop you've experienced. Not to imply this is the cause, but consider that a number of possible defects could be at fault. An example would be a faulty BMS module (inside the battery). It would be interesting to measure the amperage draw with various devices turned on. From that, it's possible to judge drain vs. battery status to say whether the battery is meeting spec, or if the load is excessive (due to a faulty unit).

Someone on FB thinks that the app will show the amp draw, if so, I’ll turn on each device separately and take a note. I don’t suspect the new battery 100%, because it (Garmin setup) was draining my old cranking battery also. I assumed the battery was just weak, apparently it wasn’t. Someone mentioned to check my connections, they thought that maybe a bad connection was causing the graph to pull more amps than needed, this sounds backwards to me; but I’m not gonna argue at this point. Definitely something funky happening! Do you think there could be something with the wiring causing this issue? 10g to the graphs on 1 circuit and 10g on another circuit just for the gls module.

Do you have any idea, how much power a graph would pull while in standby mode? I can’t find anything documented.


And thank you for the info.