I will confirm what Don says about poisonings. I’ve been poisoned many times and the zapper is a real lifesaver. I’m even a member of the green poison war wound club. Its happening less frequently these days but a couple months back, one of the chat psychics was poisoned so it ain’t quite over yet. A zapper is a real lifesaver. I would encourage anyone who owns one to buy a backup just in case (Andy’s – CTBusters inexpensive one works nicely in this regard).
I do know of that LP Zapper. Sure it lasts a long time but the current it provides to the mobius coil is infinitesimally small.
The field-grade SP’s that Don has been known to make and give to some of us runs an average current of about 5 milliamps through the mobius coil (10 milliamps or around this as a 50% duty cycle pulse waveform). The specs for the LP Zapper claim it uses 1/4 milliamp and doesn’t break out how much goes to the coil and how much to power the electronics. Even if we assume everything runs through the SP coil (guaranteed it doesn’t) and that this is an average current at 50% duty cycle, it means the SP coil gets 1/2 milliamp impulse current which is about 20 times LESS than the ones that Don has been known to make. I speak of these because its all I have right now. I can’t speak for what vendors electronics do.
I will tell you that my 4 AA battery trick with one of Don’s SP’s runs it for 30 days or a few more before the batteries die (thats continuous, 24 hours per day) because the individual I helped to do this kept good tabs on exactly how long the batteries lasted and was tickled pink that they did last as long as I said they would.
Now lets talk about voltage. The coil (mobius) wrapped around the crystal is usually around 1-2 Ohms in resistance (it is, in reality, a rather short piece of copper wire). To run 10 milliamps peak through the thing (assuming a worst case of 2 Ohms), you need:
E=IR= 0.010 * 2 = 0.02 VOLTS – yup, all of 2 hundreths of a volt across the coil!
In reality what happens is that the pulser circuit runs off the full battery voltage and current feeds the mobius coil through a ballast resistor to cut the current down and between this and the limit the chip output stage itself provides, on a 9V battery you get about 10 milliamps and this drops off a bit as the battery heads towards dead because the battery voltage drops, though its not that bad given that end of life for a 9V is around 4.5V which is still plenty to keep the pulser chip supplying close to full current. That chip should be able to provide close to full current till its supply gets closer to 2.5V. The chip itself can run on as low a voltage as 1.5V but when you get close to this its output drive circuit starts to become a bit impaired and the current output drops off.
In reality, if you could build a pulser circuit that runs down to the end of life battery voltage of 0.8V (you can but it would have to be built out of discrete parts – transistors and the like – no IC runs at this low a voltage) you could legitimately (and easily) run a full power SP with 1 single AA or AAA battery, still supplying the full 10 milliamp peak pulse to the coil right to the bitter end and a single AA battery would power the thing continuous for about 30 days. The reason for the 4 AA’s above is to maintain a voltage high enough so the LED still blinks with the existing pulser circuit being used. 2 AA’s would also work well but now you’d have no clue as to whether the batteries were any good and whether the electronics are still working because you’d get no indicator.
If you wanted visible indication the thing was running (blinking LED) with our hypothetical single cell pulser circuit, thats a bit tougher. Even the lowest voltage LED’s konk out around 2V (and to start you only have 1.5V and much less as the battery drains). It can be done but you’d need a voltage multiplier circuit to power the LED which adds even more parts. Some things are never easy.
For all intents and purposes, the mobius coil wrapped around the crystal is effectively just a short piece of wire with no real resistance. Its current fed meaning voltage doesn’t matter as long as its high enough to maintain the required current and as shown above, that voltage is miniscule.
Zappers are a different story however so don’t lump these in with SP’s. Here the zapper has to overcome the bodies own resistance which is MUCH higher so a higher voltage is needed, hence the 9V battery.
I really don’t have an answer for your connector query. As you say, no one has standardized on a connector. You’ll just have to jury-rig something, sorry.