> The answer to your particular issue is an auxiliary battery. Could do it
> yourself with a sealed led-acid, cord and plug
> to a 12v outlet in the car and high efficiency converter. Or, get one of
> those batteries packaged as an emergency
> starter, that also has USB, inverter and 110 v outlets built into the case.
When camping, we usually travel with a deep cycle marine battery (and
charger). My wife finished the last week of writing her book with her
laptop plugged into it. With the inverter and powerstrip, I do keep
all of our gadgets powered up. But there comes a point where you ask
yourself "what in the world am I doing?" The amount of infrastructure
we lug around for the feeding and caring of our electronic devices is
nuts. But we tent camp out of a Jeep, so we have space and labor
issues.
> We almost always go somewhere during the day, and 15-20 minutes of driving
> fully charges both batteries. Indispensable
> is a digital meter and chart of-no load voltages corresponding to % of
> charge. The relationship is FAR from linear. I
> use a dedicated meter that plugs into the 12v outlet.
Depends on how deep you go. I know that the car battery in my Jeep
will get painfully low if I get past the two hour mark on charging
stuff. When the starter goes "WhooWhoWhoo......Whoo..." I know I've
gone too far. 15-20 minutes of driving will recover about half of the
lost power, but then you get into logarithms. It takes a LOT longer to
top off the battery. It takes a few minutes for the alternator to stop
sounding like a sack of cats.
In all honesty, you wouldn't believe how liberating it felt to be free
of camera batteries on the last Zuikofest. However, I couldn't keep a
charge in the cellphone and the AA batteries were a pain. So, not
totally free of battery hassles, but a step in the right direction.
Joel will attest to the fact that my inverter was working the entire
trip.
--
Ken Norton
ken@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.zone-10.com
--
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