12v inverters - Output voltage too high?

going I need to leave the car a fair distance from the tent and will be us ing a spare battery, mostly without the inverter attached. Still have to wo rk out options for recharging in the morning...

ul to have about if power fails in a storm.

Honda? Dude, I drive a Maserati.

You can buy brief case style folding solar panels for just this type of application. I've seen then sold by Maplin in the UK and on ebay so expect they'd be easy to find in Germany.

Honda? Dude, I drive a Maserati.

================= My Honda SUV accepts a 12AWG silicone (140C) wire with a 1/4" Faston in a spare fuse position under the hood, which I use to run always-live 12V battery power in or out without the shorting risk of unattended jumper cables.

This displays the voltage and current.

I know nothing of Maseratis.

-jsw

They've got a pretty sweet minivan. Check them out!

robobass prodded the keyboard with:

The issue is the waveform of the output from the inverter. The meter is measuring the peak voltage rather than the average over a complete cycle. You really need to use an oscilloscope to see and measure the individual points of the modified sinewave form.

And with the scope you load it to at least 50% of power rating. That is steady state 50 not a peak or switch on surge...

Many power supplies are designed to be run under load, like the real world. Some blow up if not loaded. Those are typically the high current supplies. High voltage supplies are internally loaded.

Mart> robobass prodded the keyboard with:

The Lambo offroader is a sweetie, too.

They do not read RMS either....

Here's a possible idea. Get a lamp, and a light meter. Measure the brightness of the lamp when run from the line. Repeat from the inverter. Compare.

A incandescent lamp does not care what the waveform looks like; its output is a function of the RMS voltage.

This is a better idea than mine. Old lab-grade RMS voltmeters were bolometers; the test voltage heated an element, and you measured the temperature.

Here is a simple and quite sensitive way to compare the intensities of two light sources:

-jsw

David Lesher prodded the keyboard with:

Actually that is a very good way to measure overall power. Radio hams used to do just that to measure tramsmitter output.

Baron fired this volley in news:mnrfje$jfn$2@dont- email.me:

Not only to "measure", but to figure peak 'final stage' tuning. I've tuned into a "light bulb dummy load" many times.

Of course, the feedline and antenna always behave differently, but it's a starting place. Did WAC on 40 watts, CW.

Lloyd

Thanks. That should work for comparing the light from LED's too.

Dan

"Lloyd E. Sponenburgh" prodded the keyboard with:

Yes I agree that was a method I used for a long time, then I changed to an RF voltmeter at the antenna. I used the bulb comparison method to determine power output. I was primerily interested in VHF and UHF ie above 144Mhz.

A square wave will make an insuction motor "sing" differently than a sine wave of the same eddectivr amplitude.

Looks like I need a new keyboard .My old one has forgotten how to spell - This old Microsoft Natural Kbd is getting stupid on me.

Stop worrying about the meter.

Just take two identical lamp bulbs, run one off the inverter and the other off a 220 volt ac line and if they appear to be equally bright then you should be good to go.

Jeff