Hi

I've bought a motor home and will be working on a laptop as I travel.  I'm a tad confused about inverters and a salesman at Joyce Mayne recommended a Belkin.  Does anyone have experience with these?  I hope to mostly free camp and have no air conditioner.  Solar panels are currently being fitted.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks. 

Hi Adventurer, You dont say what size it is, I have googled Belkin & the 300w version looks simmilar to the power house inverter 300W from Altronics which is a Modified Square Wave type, this is a guess as non of there info on inverters actualy tells you. If it is a MSW inverter it should be ok.  cheers Daryl

Thanks for your help Daryl!

It is possible for Modified Sine Wave inverters to destroy electronic gear.
I would strongly recommend using ONLY isolated Pure Sine Wave inverters.

Cheers,
Peter

Thanks for that Peter.

   Hi Adventurer, Pict of wave form of a MSW inverter output, A Altronics Power House Inverter, M8076  300Watt The wave form out of this inverter is relatively clean & ive never had any problems running gear of it. You are likely to have trouble with Square Wave inverters which can have HV spikes on top of the wave form & these tend to be the realy cheep inverters.  Cheers Daryl

A nother option which I use is a JayCar 12V, 150Watt Laptop powersuply  MP3472 $74.95 is switchable out puts 15,16,18,19,20,22,24,Volt & comes with DC adaptors & 6Amp o/p. this way is probably a more efficient way of running a computer of 12Vdc.  Cheers Daryl

Thanks for all your help Daryl and Peter; much appreciated. 

That oscilloscope trace of the inverter output sure makes a mockery of the term "modified sine wave" ! Nothing much sinusoidal about that waveform!

Its more modified than this which is a RedArc 150 W inverter. This one makes fans noisy the MSW one doesnt.  Cheers Daryl

-- Edited by DeBe on Tuesday 16th of March 2010 06:58:03 PM

How about a sinusoidal one to complete the trio, DeBe?

Cheers,
Peter

Hi Peter Un fortunately dont own a Pure sine wave 12V inverter only a Genquip 2600W digital generator, heres a pic of that just to round it of. All vert scale is 50V/Cm. Cheers Daryl

-- Edited by DeBe on Tuesday 16th of March 2010 09:23:51 PM

Any non-techies still with us just talk amongst yourselves for a few minutes

For techies only....

It would be interesting to see the waveform of a real world PSW inverter.  Many years ago in a previous life when I was gainfully (?) employed I was sorting out performance discrepancies of equipment operating on mains voltage and on a generator and found significant "rounding" on the top of the generator waveform probably due to 2nd harmonic distortion. (another way of saying there was probably a significant 100 hz component).  This meant the peak voltage was lower than it should have been relative to the RMS voltage.

That second photo shows a lot of crap (like that highly technical term?) that might play havoc with sensitive electronic stuff.  As well as the leading edge spikes there appears to be some high frequency hash on the negative going pulses.

Yes Jim that woried me to It was taken on a RedArc 150W inverter that i have but Im not keen to use either. Il throw in the circuit for the Genquip generator which is the 3rd pic, they are a close copy of a Honda That close there was legal action taken by Honda in Europe. They are rather interesting the main winding is 3Phase & runs about 350 - 400V AC @ high freq as there is 24Pole Stator & magnetic rotor. The inverter unit rectifies the 3phase then its choped up at 50Cycles it also drives a stepper motor on the carby in Eco mode to vary the eng RPM to the load. Cant help my self Jim when I buy some thing I just have to know how it works just incase I have to fix it.  Cheers Daryl

Here is another one Jim, Its a GMC generator 2 stroke using Capacitance Reactance voltage regulation I know some people dont like these but I have run a Computer controled auto washing machine on it when the power went off & didnt apear to have any adverse efects on it.  Cheers Daryl ( also only 2Pole Genny)

-- Edited by DeBe on Wednesday 17th of March 2010 09:21:20 PM