Cool Mods - Thread restored 10/18/2012
My daughter was getting a little warm in her bunk during our last camping trip, so I decided to put her a fan in to keep the air flowing. I had been wanting to add a 12-volt fan to the main livin...
Forum Discussion
For years I used a small inverter to charge my cell phones from the only 12 volt plug up behind the tv. Yes I knew it was inefficient to convert 12 volt to 120 volt and then down to 5 volt to charge the phone. But it' was only a few phones so I figured why not. Well eventually I wanted my phone by my bed yet to allow it to charge so I decided it was finally time to act.
The first challenge was finding suitable outlet with no LED illumination. I am usually boondocking and that means that even a single LED illuminated at night is using up power. On top of that, I hate waking up at night and seeing the trailer interior partially lit up. Amazingly there was only one non illuminated outlet on Amazon and it cost about $5 more than the illuminated variety. But really at $15 I think I can afford the price. Link
Once I had the outlet I needed power for it. I really wanted to tap into an interior circuit so it would already be fused. I obviously also wanted to tap in close to the new plug and limit the wire length. In my trailer that unfortunately meant I was tapping into a light fixture above my head. The problem was there is no path from top to bottom that would be hidden inside the cabinets. So I had to use a short piece of decorative conduit. I ran this down the front left (drivers side) of the trailer so it's farthest from the line of site when sitting inside.
Unfortunately as you can see I did not pay attention to the wallpaper when drilling and the drill chuck chewed it up. For the bottom hole I used the cardboard from a freebee notepad that a realtor dropped on my porch placed between the drill chuck and the wall paper to prevent damaging the wall. I do have an idea how to fix the damage, but that's really low priority right now.
To make the hole for the outlet I went behind the cabinet and put the drill bit up tight into the corner of the cabinet to keep it all close to the bed. The hole was beautiful. It was right where I thought I wanted it and the outlet slid in nice and tight. I was happy, right up until I tried to screw the big nut on the back of the outlet. Apparently drilling tightly into the corner wasn't the best idea and I had to get out my vibratory cutter to make some clearance notches.
Once past that hurdle I used some screw in wire holders to keep the wire up put of harms way. I do plan to add some protective conduit since the wires are exposed, even though they are up out of the way.
And here is the finished product. 2 outlets and non illuminated.
Now I can plug my phone in by my bed and eliminate the inverter and adapters like I did before. As a side note you might notice that the outlet is 2.1A on one side and only 1A on the other. That was all that was available at the time. Since then the Amazon seller has updated and the outlets are now a double 2.1A so it charges fast no matter which port you use.
The first challenge was finding suitable outlet with no LED illumination. I am usually boondocking and that means that even a single LED illuminated at night is using up power. On top of that, I hate waking up at night and seeing the trailer interior partially lit up. Amazingly there was only one non illuminated outlet on Amazon and it cost about $5 more than the illuminated variety. But really at $15 I think I can afford the price. Link
Once I had the outlet I needed power for it. I really wanted to tap into an interior circuit so it would already be fused. I obviously also wanted to tap in close to the new plug and limit the wire length. In my trailer that unfortunately meant I was tapping into a light fixture above my head. The problem was there is no path from top to bottom that would be hidden inside the cabinets. So I had to use a short piece of decorative conduit. I ran this down the front left (drivers side) of the trailer so it's farthest from the line of site when sitting inside.
Unfortunately as you can see I did not pay attention to the wallpaper when drilling and the drill chuck chewed it up. For the bottom hole I used the cardboard from a freebee notepad that a realtor dropped on my porch placed between the drill chuck and the wall paper to prevent damaging the wall. I do have an idea how to fix the damage, but that's really low priority right now.
To make the hole for the outlet I went behind the cabinet and put the drill bit up tight into the corner of the cabinet to keep it all close to the bed. The hole was beautiful. It was right where I thought I wanted it and the outlet slid in nice and tight. I was happy, right up until I tried to screw the big nut on the back of the outlet. Apparently drilling tightly into the corner wasn't the best idea and I had to get out my vibratory cutter to make some clearance notches.
Once past that hurdle I used some screw in wire holders to keep the wire up put of harms way. I do plan to add some protective conduit since the wires are exposed, even though they are up out of the way.
And here is the finished product. 2 outlets and non illuminated.
Now I can plug my phone in by my bed and eliminate the inverter and adapters like I did before. As a side note you might notice that the outlet is 2.1A on one side and only 1A on the other. That was all that was available at the time. Since then the Amazon seller has updated and the outlets are now a double 2.1A so it charges fast no matter which port you use.
