Earthing an 12v Inverter

[Friar Tuck]

 I do all of my imaging away from the house,  and now my van has died, I have bought  2x leisure batteries, and a pure sinkwave 1000w 12v inverter,

I aim to run the Laptop, and a CGEM DX mount, from this,  guide camera, feed of the laptop, not shore how to get power to the Atik 383l?

I will charge the batteries at home, and connect the inverter in the field, ( inside Asto tent) the instructions for the inverter are for wiring it into a car, of which im not,

so do I still need to earth the inverter, and or fuse, if I do any ideas please, sorry if this is a daft question, my electrical knowledge is poor

many thanks

[astroalex]

Atik 383l seems to have 12V car plug, I imagine this will do the job http://www.amazon.co.uk/Accessory-Socket-Battery-Clamps-Crocodile/dp/B003SQ6U6Q .

Check if there is a fuse in the plug of the camera, there can be one already under unscrewable tip. If not, you probably should add one, perhaps there are clamps like the one linked above with a built-in fuse.

You should check manual for your inverter, does it say it must be earthed? There are resources on Internet which explain why earthing is needed, like this one https://electricalnotes.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/what-is-earthing/. I will not go as far as giving you an express advise on not earthing, I'm not a certified electrician, but I have my doubts it has any measurable safety benefits in your setup.

[Friar Tuck]

many thanks astroalex, after just contacting maplins where it came from, they recon I do not need to earth it, but he did say that im kind of shooting myself in the foot,

as im taking the power up to 240v, via the inverter and battery, then dropping the power it back down to run the cgem, mount, he said, that there are ways of running it direct from the battery,

can anybody advise please

I need to power up,

Laptop

cgem DX

Atik 383l plus filter wheel

guide camera

I have 1000w inverter with twin plug outlets,  and 2 large leisure batteries

[astroalex]

I thought you will use inverter to power your laptop only. If your mount has 12V plug, you can surely power it directly from the battery, like the inverter.

You could power laptop directly from the battery too, using step-up DC-DC converter (google for DC DC 12V module) to bring the voltage up to 19V or whatever your laptop expects. Just take care to properly match voltage and polarity. But chances are your laptop will not work in full. Modern laptop power supply are much more intelligent then a battery, they might complain they cannot identify power supply and will run with lower speed or something. You might be able to override this behaviour somehow, but I do not see the point. Better stick to inverter + standard power supply. You loose some power, but even if you loose half your battery will probably have enough juice.

[Cpaulo]

Hi there

It does rather seem that you are needlessly stepping the voltage up to step it down again as all the kit you have runs in the range of 12v to about 19v for the computer; not sure which computer you have so only a guess. The problem seems to be running the laptop whose voltage is different from your other kit but there are bigger cell batteries available for most laptops which prolong the computers life very nicely.

Your mount and Atik camera run off 12v and can be directly powered from the batteries with the use of a proprietary connector while your guide camera will probably run from the laptop USB which only puts out milli volts.

The only thing gained by using an inverter would be that you can use all the power leads and adapters that come with your computer, mount, camera etc. they each have a transformer that steps down from 240v to the required user voltage.

Earthing is not a dirty word and not to be taken lightly, it takes 30mA to stop the heart and your inverter will kick out approximately 4A; Power divided by volatage (1000/240). Your biggest concern is direct contact with live parts, if there is an internal fault the casing could become live; that is if it's not double insulated. The manufacturer manual should cover this. However there should be some kind of grub screw on the external casing that you can attach a fly lead and earth spike; the idea is to make a low resistance path from the casing to earth so that if it does become live the current is dissipated through the path of least resistance to the mass of earth.

If you are at all unsure be safe and seek out advice in person from somebody who can look at your kit and advise how best to proceed.

[Friar Tuck]

thank you both for this

[Starlight 1]

I Earth my inverter it hold hight voltage even when its turn off.

[hughgilhespie]

Hmmm - not sure I would ever want to share a tent with 230 volts.

Regards, Hugh

[Friar Tuck]

thanks all, at the end of the day, im faced with being mobile, with the problem of powering the equipment?

without zapping myself in the process,