|
Had to add bypass caps and ferrites to make noise acceptable with ignition off. Bought the Tripp Lite to power a laptop for ham radio mobile contesting. Finally gave it away and used a different laptop that would run on 12 volts. But the noise from the Tripp Lite went ballistic with ignition on. Some hams had success with the brand before. The inverter hash was really bad, wiped out weak signals on the radio.
Low cost inverters such as this produce electric power that is an approximate sine wave as opposed the perfect sine wave that come out of a wall outlet -- as far I know this isn't a problem for typical consumer electronic equipment, laptops etc -- but it's probably worth checking the user manual of the device to be powered just to make sure there are no precautions about using it with an inverter. Some devices will require the power of the larger (noisy fan) model. However, the AC motors in things like power tools and appliances may run a bit lest efficiently when connected to an (inexpensive) inverter.*** Update ***We've used this with a variety of cell phone/ipod/handheld game chargers and so far haven't experienced any problems. Seems to work just fine -- have only used it for cell phone and small game units. The advantage of this smaller unit is no fan - quiet.
Just keep the car running and it works perfectly. Works just like promised, so it's exactly what I need, but the first time I used it I turned off my car (which can normally power things while off), and proceeded to blow a fuse.
I suggest you do some research on what items you want to power so you don't make the mistake I did and get one that's under-powered. I sold this one and bought it's bigger brother, weighing in at 375watts. It's sufficient for most laptops though, just not mine. I puchased this inverter to power my laptop. Little did I know what a power-hog my laptop was.
A very good feature is auto-shut off in case of overload or no-load. I have used it with lets' say 1) Think pad Laptop charger, 2) Ipod Charger 3) Cell phone charger and it has worked flawlessly. It's been more than a year and a half now.
|
