? power surge with inverter?

YIKES !!

You need to have someone who is familiar with the equipment LOOK at it and tell you exactly what it IS and what it can be used for.

A real inverter takes 12 V battery power IN and produces 120 VAC out.
It kind of replaces the generator or shore power for SMALL appliances.
The generator does NOT need to be running.......if it really is an inverter.....but the 12 V batteries do need to be in place and functioning.

You NEED a multimeter to make basic tests on things like this.

As a rule of thumb, power everything you can from DC(battery). Especially small electronics like phones.

It would help to know the year and model of your truck camper.

Electronics turning on and off while using an inverter is a symptom of having a modified sine wave inverter rather than a pure sine wave inverter.

Whole idea of having inverter is so you can have 120V without running generator.
Obviously it comes with limit.
Why your charger was coming on/off might be what was explained above, but most of phone chargers go with USB outlet, meaning 5V.
You can buy small 12/USB adapter for pennies.

Thanks for the info. I'll try it from the batteries and usb.
And I'll figure out how to add my sig :)

You need to find the documentation for the inverter, but here's my guess: many inverters have a "power save" mode which cycles the 110V power on and off. It does this looking for a load to power. If it doesn't see enough load, it shuts down again for a period of time (a few seconds). It does this to save power when nothing is plugged in. Your phone charger has a very low load, not enough to tell the inverter to stay on. Try plugging something more in (a table lamp would do), then try the phone charger also. It should now stay on.

Of course that isn't a good solution to charging the phone. But most inverters have a setting to turn the power saving feature off as well. Then it will power the outlets regardless of load as long as the inverter is on. The downside is the constant draw on the batteries is higher (this is referred to as "idle current" in the inverter specs.).

Some phones do not like modified sine wave.
May was well post the brand and model number of the inverter for best answers.

I have an android (uses a different charge standard) and wife has Iphone (uses standard USB charge standard) I bought one of these
bottom jack for android (quick charge 2) top jack for Iphone or any other USB device.

this skips any inverter as your charging direct from 12V batteries.

Also depending on the setup, the generator itself will have an inverter so simultaneously running the generator and using another inverter could have weird results since the generator is charging the battery.

Try using the inverter without the generator running to see if you get any power from it. Something small like a fan or a lamp is an ideal appliance to test.

You're going to learn a lot about truck campers and their systems. :)

Kayteg1 wrote:
Whole idea of having inverter is so you can have 120V without running generator.

Or to put that a different way......IF you are plugged into shore power OR have the generator running.....there is NO need for an inverter.

IF you have mostly the stock configuration that came with the RV, there is little need for an inverter.....because you probably will need to run the generator a couple of times a day for a couple of hours just to recharge the batteries. With just a small amount of planning ahead, you can also charge your phones, cook breakfast, cool down the beadrooms for night time, etc. at the same time.

It's pretty obvious that he doesn't understand what he is dealing with......but we've all been there at one time, to some degree.

Kayteg1 wrote:
Whole idea of having inverter is so you can have 120V without running generator.
Obviously it comes with limit.
Why your charger was coming on/off might be what was explained above, but most of phone chargers go with USB outlet, meaning 5V.
You can buy small 12/USB adapter for pennies.

X2