Car adapters for 8890/5680

Adam.. what about the140W and 300W adaptors i have seen over at CompUSA?

Ops.. was only140 and 300W, but still..

Good question... I wouldnt mind using my lappy as a GPS!

Ah, yes.. thats what i meant... sorry for the confusion.

DC-AC Power Inverters as Adam said. This is the route I went with my laptop. I also had a second charger(wall outlet style) for my cell phone that I would plug into it. I figure using it, saved me about $70 to $90 worth of accessories for my laptop or my cell phone.

I'm actually looking at getting a bigger inverter to permanmently mount in the center console of my car. Figure that might be a worthy venture.

Just make sure your wiring is good enough! Lots of wiring in autos are not really designed to push that many volts out of a cig-socket.

There was at least one (or more) good discussions on this here in the forums (regarding wiring and such).

-myrkat

Look for something that is rated for at least 300 and preferably 400 watts continuous. That would mean something like 600 to 800 watts peak. Its important to note that difference or you could end up buying something that will, as Adam indicated with the DC car adaptors, be running at full power all the time and will burn out quickly.

You also want to look at getting 2 or more outlets. Make sure its got a fuse as well to prevent overload. Most of the units I checked out with these specs came with auxilary cables to connect directly to your battery or, better, to an empty circuit in your car's fuse box. This is much better than using the cigarette light plug. Unless you have rated DC convenience outlets (many new cars have them instead of or in addition to a lighter) the typical lighter outlet isn't rated nor wired for that kind of current. You risk blowing fuses or, more obnoxiously, starting a fire. Also make sure if you permanently mount a DC to AC inverter that it has plenty of ventilation. These are not usually the most efficient devices and they put out a lot of heat (waste) so ventilation is critical. Just like with your SAGER.

A good inverter, coupled with your car and perhaps one of those power center/emergency starter packs, can be a great combination. Add one of those luggage rollers and you have portable power anywhere.

My setup will run my 8886, printers, lan and phone/fax for at least 12 hours, assuming heavy usage. with typical usage, lots of printing and faxes, maybe 6 to 8 hours. On a trip to the beach, there's plenty of room on the luggage cart to carry towels, blankets, lunch, drinks, etc.

Now if I can just get the right lawnmower engine, I could make it self-powered. Add in a propane bar-be-que and a powered cooler, four wheel drive, ... .... ....

Two letters for you: R V...

Oh, you're "stuck" on an island... well, you can still RV it, just do laps!

-myrkat the land lubber

I haven't had any problems yet. Though the inverter I am using is just large enough to power my Inspiron 4000.

If I get a larger one, that will definitely be hardwired in, switchable so it turns off with the car and I don't accidently drain the battery. Though most good inverters have some protection against accidently doing just that.

What I don't get is that if the std ac power adaptors are rated at 20V @ 6A why is it that the existing car adaptors which are also rated the same will not work. Am I missing something here?

Remember inverters and converters and all that kinda stuff isnt 100% efficient so if you got a 400 watt inverter, at full output it will be drawing around 500 watts or more from the car's electrical system. At 13.8 Volts this is about 36 amps of current which is definitely a large load on your battery and alternator which WILL FOR SURE lower the life of both of them.

If you plan on having the inverter on when the car is off then a deepcycle battery is a must. These types of batteries are not damaged if they are discharged deeply. Normal car batteries are damaged permanently the FIRST time they are discharged and with the weather turning bad I wouldnt push my luck trying to power a 36 amp load.

My car on the other hand has a 150 amp alternator with two large deep cycle batteries which can handle 300 amps of continuous output for a half hour so No problems for me

If your ground connections and battery terminals are corroded, expect to have problems with a large inverter powering a large load. You also risk a fire if your electrical system isn't quite working as good as new. I'm a Mobile electronics Certified Installer (MECP) and I hear about people having fires all the time from jerry rigging inverters and amplifiers that draw lots of current so be careful and do the job right.

If you drive a cheap import, your alternator is going to be small so you might have problems driving a large load. usually the car feels as if it has no balls if the alternator is pushing a lot of current. If you draw more current than the alternator is supplying, then the battery will supply the power extra needed current. This will only last a while and even less if you got a bad battery, When the voltage sags too low your car will stall and your alternator's life will be severely reduced if not finished. It takes more power to make less power so your car's charging system MUST be up to the task if you want reliability from an inverter and your car.

Just make sure not to leave the laptop in the car, last night someone smashed my window and stole my cell phone, $400 cd/mp3 player, and all my CD's ... haha they missed the laptop sitting on the backseat though. Won't be leaving that in my car anymore!

SPL15, I am wrong if you have measured, but a good quality has the potential to be very efficient, possibly losing only about 5% or so. Of course, it really does not affect the extreme accuracy of your statements.

Also, are you saying that it would be better to power a Sager from a big, heavy, powerful, beautiful American car? Perhaps a 1995 Impala SS? If so, What size alternator would you recommend for a 1300W stereo and a 400W invertor?

Randy

One attached to a CAT D9 diesel .

Thanks for a well informed post SPL15. Nice to see someone with some accurate knowledge. I would agree about using deep discharge batteries if you are going to leave the car engine off whilst using an inverter.

mondu Construct - sorry to hear about your car getting broken in to. You are lucky your car theives have no taste (I am not sure if that is a sort of inverse jibe at your taste in music or what ). Anyway a timely reminder.

by aussie


a 20V 6 A power supply should work fine. But most cars are putting out 14 to 15 volts to charge a 12 volt system. That may not be enough for the power control circuits in the SAGER. If you delivered direct to the battery terminal, 14 to 15 volts should be ok as that's what the internal battery supplies.

The other problem is the connection. I've found out that's a GPS connector, at least for Garmin models it is. The outer barrel is not used for power or signal, only the 4 pins inside. There is a fin on the inside of the barrel that orients it to the female plug. That goes at the SW (lower left) position. Then pin 1 is east (right), 2 is north (top), 3 is west (left) and 4 is south (bottom). For the GPS units, Pin one is ground, 2 is TX, 3 is power + and 4 is TR.

Hopefully SAGER uses it in the same manner. If so, you have your connector. You can find out more info about the plugs at www.marchingant.net/battpack.htm
Look for connectors.

It might be a good idea to run that power through a voltage regulator and adding a 6 amp fuse.

Hi Marquis, I was referring to the one in this thread. It specifically mentions it does 20V @ 6A, but according to Adam it will not work . That is why I wondered if I was missing something.

I will have to check out that Garmin plug. One of my clients uses those things all the time. Thanks for heads up.

People that do things like that just need to be shot. Someone broke into my brother's car my Senior Year of highschool. I came out in the end, they were unable to get the CD Player out, and just merely broke a window. Insurance covered the window AND decided to replace the CD player. We had a new one installed at Best Buy and they gave us the old back.

I took it home, fixed the bent casing and installed in my 92 Geo Prizm. Ah... those were the days.

Since then our neighborhood now has street lights all around the circle, and we've added more exterior lights (motion sensing ones) to the outside of our house. And I have some pretty oddball hours when home, so I'm usually awake at those peak break-in hours. And my dad gets up to 3am to relieve me (actually relieve himself, he's 65).

I would consider a car alarm, but they don't work and bad thunder storms tend to set them off here in Florida.

aussie, I can't imagine why that wouldn't work other than I'm told the 8890s take 130 watts max and that's limited to 120. Maybe that causes problems with the 8890 when it wants that extra bit of juice, but for the life of me, I can't figure out why, it should just take a tad longer to charge the internal battery is all. As best I can tell. the 8890 takes 96 watts in and of itself, as that's what its internal battery puts out. So as long as you don't care about charging the battery while operating, anything with more than 96 watts should work. Then again, there may be something inside that will have a hissy if it doesn't get its juice.

Also, check out Portable Design Magazine,
http://pd.pennnet.com
some neat stuff in there.

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Also, are you saying that it would be better to power a Sager from a big, heavy, powerful, beautiful American car? Perhaps a 1995 Impala SS? If so, What size alternator would you recommend for a 1300W stereo and a 400W invertor?
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Yes american cars usually have higher amp alternators... USUALLY though. some new cheap cars that are trying to steal from the import market use lower amp alternators though.

An Impalla would definitely have a beefy alternator and would be able to handle a pretty large load. For the stereo it all depends on what that 1300 watts is powering. Are you a ground pounder? or a sound quality guy? I have a 3000 watt stereo but since I only play it loud at competitions, my electrical system can handle it. 3000 watts continuous is a lot of power but luckily music has a high peak to average ratio for power needs.

An Inverter is a form of switch mode power supply. The most efficient ones are around 80% and if you get one with true sine wave the efficiency wont be as high. Sine waves have a higher peak to RMS value while a square wave's peak is it's RMS value. BUT square waves produce more interference and can create problems for digital appliances.

I havent seen the power supply for the sager's but I'm guessing it has 2 different voltage levels. Also depending on how the system was designed, the laptop could be highly effected by ripple on the voltage from the power supply which is why it is not recommended you use the other adapters that may or may not work. The bigger the load the more ripple there will be on the voltage and the more current being produced and consumed the hotter things run. Hot electronics dont tend to last very long. and in the case of regulated switch mode power supplies (the power adapter) All these factors and more come into play. The voltage coming from the adapter is probably (not certain) stepped down a little more by internal regulators in the laptop itself to help stablize and filter the voltage even more.

also if you load down power supplies the voltage sags form what it should be and ripple increases drastically... DONT OVERLOAD POWER SUPPLIES!!! your just asking for trouble that probably wont be covered by warranty.