Portable power source as inverter

Odds are very good, However I'm not sure if the ciggy-lighter connection is strong enough, You'd do better to clamp it onto the house battery and do it that way.

Page 2: That inverter is for sure an MSW. and MSW is not the best choice by a very very long shot for any radio receiver (This includes both Televisions when using the tuner and the Sat Receiver) as they can cause interference.

Recommendation.. Try it and see. WORST thing that will happen is a low voltage shutdown.

If you powered any kind of an ac A/C off a 400 watt inverter, you are God !

Back in my tent camping days I had this favorite spot on a creek with pretty fast moving water in it. I rigged up a water wheel driving an old alternator and regulator and surprisingly ended up with a small source of usable 12VDC. I was able to keep my battery tricle charged and ran some lights and a fan back then from the battery... It sure beat the heck out using a whole bag full of D-CELLS...

I was also experimenting with a car radiator where I ran steel pipes over the fire pit and converted to rubber hoses and connected to the car radiator sitting inside the tent. Then filled up the radiator with water. The heat from the fire pit made the hot water keep flowing and you would adjust the amount of heat by raising or lowering the steel pipe that ran over the fire. Then I placed a D-CELL fan behind the radiator and blowed the warm air around the tent. Worked like gang busters but you had to stay with it all the time to get steady heat coming out of it... Strange enough if I filled the radiator with water and laid the steel pipe in the creek it kept the temp of the water pretty cool. This was a great small air conditioner then. This actually ran better then the heat from the fire pit once it all got going. Not alot of air conditioning but definitely enough to feel the difference inside the tent on the hot days... This would have worked alot better if I had a 12VDC pump going but didnt have one available back then to play with.

You can always come up with something experimenting with things... Using todays SOLAR PANELS feeding a small inverter should provide for alot of experimenting with 120VAC powered things. Inverters would need alot of Dc Current however.

Roy Ken

At this point, I'm not even going to try using another inverter. I'm just going to power my 33 watt TV with my Power Dome, and use my trailer's 12v DVD player to watch a movie.

If I make it through dinner and a movie, and still have power to run my furnace all night, I'll be a happy camper.

What most of us do to be successful about doing this is to beef up the on-board converter/charger unit and make sure it is a smart mode charging technology model. Upgrade all of the interior lightning for LEDs, run larger battery cables to support a new battery setup with at least a 220AH capacity and then practice running as GREEN as you can with everything..

My battery setup is currently 255AHs and this allows me to run all of my home entertainment items from a 600WATT PURE SIGN Wave Inverter from the battery system, I have all the lights ON I need both inside and outside, run my WX RADIO, wife uses lap heating pad when it is cool when we are up. This is almost the same evening things we do when at Electric Hookup sites with the exception of the air conditioner...

All of this will run down my battery bank to around 12.0VDC by 8AM the next morning where I connect the 30AMP Trailer Shore Power Cable directly to my 120VAC Receptacle on the 2KW HOnda Generator and re-charge my 255AH battery bank backup to its 90% charge state in a short three hour generator run time.

Once the battery bank is back up to its 90% charge state I can do this all over again for the next night run from the batteries.

Been doing this for the past five years now. This is what I call being successful...

In my early years of camping off the power grid I tried all sorts of things including those yellow portable battery power units for starting your truck when the battery ran down. It got dark on me at 10PM at night many times haha...

I made many trial runs in my back yard to get real successful about it.

Roy Ken

MrWizard wrote:
yes you can plug it in
BUT depending on how big the internal charge circuit is and how it is wired

it might not supply enough power for continuous use
in other words it will slow down the internal battery discharge, but I would be surprised if it would supply a full nights worth of TV, especially with many devices running from the inverter and using the battery power

I suggest you try it, and see if it provides satisfactory results

I see. Thank you for your insight.

I once ran a small upright air conditioner for over a half hour with this power dome's inverter, so who knows?

I've got four things sucking power when I watch TV, though; the TV, the receiver, the Satellite dish, AND some component needed for my 'swm' system for DirectTV HD, so It might or might not be pulling as much power as that AC, but probably not as much. And, like you said, It will be receiving some kind of charge rate, so it will help extend it.

I'll post back on this thread after I get to try it.

yes you can plug it in
BUT depending on how big the internal charge circuit is and how it is wired

it might not supply enough power for continuous use
in other words it will slow down the internal battery discharge, but I would be surprised if it would supply a full nights worth of TV, especially with many devices running from the inverter and using the battery power

I suggest you try it, and see if it provides satisfactory results