Topic: Festival re-charging?

[willyp523]

Plan on hitting a few festivals this year, the first being Rothbury (4 days).  I'll be running a FR-2LE and have two RC 7.2 batteries to use.  The plan is to top off each battery daily. 

Trying to decide if I should spend around $100 for something like a Xantrex Powerpack
  http://tinyurl.com/mnukoj

Or would a simple $25 inverter, plugged into the cig lighter suffice?
http://tinyurl.com/laueuy

My concerns with the inverter are...the drain on my truck's battery and exposing nearby camp neighbors to exhaust from my truck while running it to re-charge it's battery if needed.

Would appreciate any opinions, suggestions.

[setboy]

I am also going to rothbury and using a Fr2LE. I have in the past for a shorter festival used a inverter. But now I am going to have to think about the exhaust thing.
But I will also have 5 Rc batteries. Two of which will be brand new and should hold a good charge, so I don't know how much charging I am going to be doing. I have heard people sweet talking vender's into letting them plug in to their vending area plugs.

I would think about getting some more RC's though if you have a good way to recharge you should be good with just two.

Edit how many and what size of CF cards will you be using? I'm think about picking up some more, but I'm not sure yet.

[willyp523]

Edit how many and what size of CF cards will you be using? I'm think about picking up some more, but I'm not sure yet.

I'll be using one 16gb card.  But I do have an 80gb portable media player/storage device (Wolverine MVP) that I can dump files to and clear the CF card.
 http://tinyurl.com/l4glue

[setboy]

Edit how many and what size of CF cards will you be using? I'm think about picking up some more, but I'm not sure yet.

I'll be using one 16gb card.  But I do have an 80gb portable media player/storage device (Wolverine MVP) that I can dump files to and clear the CF card.
 http://tinyurl.com/l4glue

I'll have to look into that.

[Gutbucket]

I primitive camp with no AC for long 4 day fests and recharge AA's, 9v's & Lithium DVD  batts with either one of those Black & Decker jump-start/tire inflation/safety-light things or a deep cycle boat battery, but I've made sure I can run all my chargers on 12VDC.

[wklitz]

those Black & Decker jump-start

the one I have I can certainly see using it for charging for an entire weekend with no issues

[Walstib62]

The power booster idea is the best. You can get them at any auto supply or Wally World. It should provide enough power to recharge through a power invertor.

[Gutbucket]

The power booster idea is the best. You can get them at any auto supply or Wally World. It should provide enough power to recharge through a power invertor.

True, and many of them have a power inverter built-in.  Yet, it's still a much better solution to use DC powered battery chargers which you can  run from the DC output of the power booster. Any batt charger that runs off a 12v output wall wart x-former will work, just make an adapter cable if the charger didn't come with a cig-lighter adapter.  Not only is running the charger on DC far, far more efficient, allowing for a lot more re-charging time, but you don't have to be around to turn the inefficient inverter off along with it's power sucking cooling fan once the batteries are charged.  Sleep is far too precious at festies to have to get up or even remeber to turn the inverter off.

[willyp523]

I ended up buying one of these...
http://tinyurl.com/6z8xk6

Had an Amazon gift certificate to use towards the purchase and figured I could use the powerpack on occasion around the house too.

Thanks.

[stevetoney]

I know my response is late for your Rothbury experience, because Rothbury has already happened, but I use an inverter and my car battery all the time.  It's the perfect solution for me because I never run out of juice that way (take jumper cables though, just in case).

Unless your truck's head's need replacement and you're spitting out black clouds from your trucks exhaust, I DEFINITELY wouldn't worry about that.  Shit, when your neighbors are probably gonna be partying at 4am, shooting fireworks off in the middle of the night, playing their music at 6am in the morning, pounding their djembe drums until the wee hours, or generally being up shooting the shit and making noise...bottom line is that you shouldn't need to worry about running your truck once a day for a half hour in order to keep your truck battery charged up.  I often sit in my car during a hot festie anyways just to get a mid-day blast of A/C!

[RobC]

here is a picture from inside my tent at GOTV 2007 recharging lots of stuff,
much easier now just recharge DVD batteries and maybe the occasional SLA

[Brian E.]

wow.  that's hardcore.

[rastasean]

http://www.alienbees.com/VIIsystem.html
very well designed!! ^ pure sine wave inverter built in
perhaps you could a) plug the recorders into that b) use that battery to charge other batteries.

Have a spare car battery laying around like me?
Use this to charge batteries while you sleep:
http://blackanddecker.com/ProductGuide/Product-Details.aspx?ProductID=17928
its a modified sine wave so I don't think plugging your laptop into it would be the best thing for it. You won't have to worry about any exhaust and its supersmall.

[Gutbucket]

its a modified sine wave so I don't think plugging your laptop into it would be the best thing for it.

Modified sine wave is fine for computers. That's what you get out of any inexpensive computer UPS (just to be clear, better more expensive UPS's with bigger batteries often DO have pure sine wave output).

Small inverters should work, but cost $$ and making that DC>AC>DC conversion is far less efficient than clipping a 12DC powered charger directly to your extra car battery or SLA. If your charger uses a wall wart style transformer with a 12vdc output then you need only make a cheap cable to bypass the wart.

[rastasean]

its a modified sine wave so I don't think plugging your laptop into it would be the best thing for it.

Modified sine wave is fine for computers. That's what you get out of any inexpensive computer UPS (just to be clear, better more expensive UPS's with bigger batteries often DO have pure sine wave output).

Small inverters should work, but cost $$ and making that DC>AC>DC conversion is far less efficient than clipping a 12DC powered charger directly to your extra car battery or SLA. If your charger uses a wall wart style transformer with a 12vdc output then you need only make a cheap cable to bypass the wart.

great advice and thanks for the clarification of using MSW vs. PSW on laptops!