12v TV in your trailer for cheap

[hedge]

I dry camp a lot so I wanted a 12V TV. 12v tv's are stupid expensive though and hard to find locally. After some looking around I found that some of the cheaper small led tv's have external power supplies. FS/BB sell the Insignia brand and it has an external power supply with an output of 12v.

So I bought the TV and then bought a 12v cable and adapter from the source. Now it is unregulated voltage so when your trailer is being charged it could be receiving upwards of 14v but most that have done this haven't had any problem.

The Insignia tv's are the ones with the external power supply

18.5 Insignia

24" Insignia

12v power cable

Type-M plug for use with above cable

YMMV

[spikerS]

Originally posted by hedge


18.5 Insignia

YMMV

ok, question, and I don't know much about electrical and stuff, but I am going to wing it.

The TV you showed, and I quoted, shows that typical power consumption is 25w.

would not using a power inverter be better, as it provides some protection?

100w power inverter

just wondering, would something like this not do the same thing?

[C_Dave45]

When we dry camp, I bring along my extra marine battery (the one I use for my trolling motor in the boat) and directly hook up a Canadian Tire 1,000 watt inverter . Saves on the house batteries.

I can run the 32" LCD TV and PS3 off that for about 3 hours or so. When it gets too low, I just swap it into the car, do our "day tripping", and it gets charged back to full.

Got the TV for $299 and the inverter for under $100 bucks. Great for those rainy camp days. Cook up some popcorn, throw in a good movie, and all 3 of us will enjoy a movie!!

[e31]

Most consumer grade power inverters tend to have a dirty AC waveform. Other than stressing devices with less robust power supply conditioning, DC->AC->DC is simply more wasteful than DC->DC.

There are a few PC monitors that have external power supplies, making them great candidates for cheap mobile use. Otherwise it is possible to disconnect/remove AC & power most DC devices with a DC->DC power supply.

[hedge]

^ exactly, I wouldn't run anything I cared about off of one of those cheap inverters. Also the more over capacity the inverter is the more power you waste doing the dc > ac conversion.

If we really need AC we have a generator but that's a last resort because even though I have a quiet one, I hate having to listen to it, carry gas etc. I'm probably going to add solar as well so that maybe I can finally leave the generator at home.

Ps, CT has the 1000w pure sine wave inverter on sale as well this week. I'm considering it but the only thing I'd like to run off it is a coffee maker like a Keurig and 1000w isn't enough so probably not much use to me.

1000w pure sine wave inverter

[BerserkerCatSplat]

Originally posted by hedge
Now it is unregulated voltage so when your trailer is being charged it could be receiving upwards of 14v but most that have done this haven't had any problem.

Why not just add a 12v voltage regulator?

[hedge]

Originally posted by BerserkerCatSplat


Why not just add a 12v voltage regulator?

maybe but it seems unnecessary, the suspicion is that the TV likely already has one on the incoming voltage. These tv's are so cheap that it's an affordable experiment.

PS, none of this is my idea, just going off the threads of guys that have done it already on rv.net