Inverters on a motorbike?
 

Hi,

On a recent trip through France & Spain I found myself carrying too many chargers for all sorts of stuff: mobile, AA batteries for the flashgun, camera battery,... you know the game. Most of them were useless on the bike and I needed 220V mains anyway. This is fine in towns, but not out in the sticks.

In my old camper-van I used to have an inverter fitted, which could run a laptop, external hard-drive and chargers for at least 6-7 hours no probs.
So I had this mad thought of fitting an inverter into my F650 Dakar's boot. I know the bike's battery is nothing compared to a full blown diesel-car battery. But better than nothing, and obviously I could run a cable and charge a laptop whilst riding.

Now, apart from being a boy who likes his toys: Why would I want to do that? Well, here's a few excuses. I could...

...fit the laptop-charger into the boot and leave all other chargers at home and charge all devices through USB via the laptop, meaning: at the most, I'll only carry a few USB cables or "USB-2-device" adaptors

...avoid buying those expensive 12v-chargers for non-standard/lithium batteries (ever seen how much Nikon/Canon want for a 12v-charger? Daylight robbery that is!)

...(being a photographer): I could download/edit/work on images on the laptop completely independently & out in the sticks, without the need for hotels


I'm not totally convinced how practical an inverter is on a bike – on the other hand: what else would I use the bike's boot for anyway? (In case you're wondering about size: this inverter is 5 x 5 x 2.3 inches (VOLTAGECONVERTERS.COM - Item Description Page - PBI200E-12)

What's your thoughts on this one? Am I going mad, or have you seen/though of this yourself before? How long do you think onoe could power a 50W laptop before the bike's battery goes down?

I don't think it's going to be very practical .
You really need a deep cycle battery to power electrical equipment .
Automotive batteries will fail very quickly if they are fully discharged regularly .
I don't imagine your F650 has a permanent magnet alternator and a kickstart , so you really need a good charged automotive battery to start the thing .

You could mount a small deep cycle battery in a pannier for your laptop etc and rig up a split charging system .
Folding or flexible solar panels would also assist the charging and could take over when you are camping.

What you are trying to do ,as I see it , is to use your alternator ,to charge a battery ,to power an inverter ,to charge another battery .

Sometimes cheap inverters and plug in battery chargers are incompatible and your small batteries will be fried .

I think it's quite practical. You only need a tiny inverter. I know you need 220v, but here's an example of what I was thinking of that runs on 110:

Amazon.com: Recoton PI75 Direct Plug DC-AC Power Inverter 75 watt: Electronics

Look at your devices- you don't need a *ton* of wattage for any of them, right?

I've always thought about running one temporarily to power an ice cream maker while traveling near home, but it would just be for fun :-)

Maybe ,it all depends on how much usage you envisage for the computer .
A fairly simple way to find out would be to leave on the lights , assuming you have a 55watt headlamp which is about equivalent to your 50watt computer , and see if the battery has any charge left after say a couple of hours .
If it won't start the bike ,then you have your answer .

But bear in mind the effects of drawing down regular automotive batteries , they simply aren't able to hold out .

If you could get some NiCad cells to use as an auxilliary they would be ideal as they can be left discharged , handle extremes of temps and abuse that would kill lead acid batteries .

Gadgets such as computers can be recharged while riding. Some camera batteries will do the same off the 12v system.

More on topic from another thread
 

Thanks for your sharing. Before reading you post, I show never use an inverter to motorbike. The 300w power inverter from bestek that I used is only for camera charging. Workmate recommend this tool for me when I told him that I'm planning to travel across the city by driving car. If you have the same require, maybe you can check bestemall on here. Hope this point is useful to you.

Your idea is to fit an inverter to get 230v so you can use your other inverters from 230v to 5v (USB) or ?v (for the computer .. some are 19v). You loose efficiency in each inverter... so you would be better off with one inverter from the bikes battery to 5v (USB) and one other inverter for the computer.

Personally I'd go for a battery that would charge from the bike as I ride along, and then recharges the USB devices overnight when I'm sleeping. The computer battery too would be best charged as you ride along, be very carefull with the connectors.

Ebay has 12 v USB chargers .. and 12 v computer chargers for reasonable costs ... ( $20 for 19v 3A)


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Estimates of spare battery energy for run time

Your battery is about 12 AH .. amp hours .. 12 volt

You would want at lest 6 AH left for starting the bike .. so you could use 6AH for camping things ..

6*12 = 72 watts for one hour, or 36 watts for 2 hours, or 15.5 Watts for 4 hours... 50 watts .. would be 1.44 hours = 1 hour 26 minutes.
Note: assumes things are good - battery, starter motor, bike ... if your having starting problems .. don't add to them by using up battery power for camping things.

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Note .. posts were started in 2007, so this is a bit late.

You can get 12v chargers for many laptops. End of problem.

If you can run heated grips and a heated jacket from the bike, you sure as heck can recharge some electrical gizmos. You may not be able to charge some USB devices whilst the laptop is closed, it depends whether the laptop keeps the USB ports active. My Macbook does, some laptops don't. You can get AA and AAA chargers that work off 240v, 12v and 5v (USB), obviously the lower the voltage the longer the recharge takes.

Err .. in this context No.
A simple input voltage reduction can be overcome by drawing more current to get the same power. And power is what is being transferred, the inverter handles the input (both voltage and current) to give the required output voltage (and current).

It may be true for some inverters, pay more money and you will get similar performance.

FINALLY most manufacturers are going on the USB charging bandwagon. So luckily this is now mostly a non-issue. Sadly some tablets require 2A to charge, but there are 2A 12V USB ports available. The tech pile is getting smaller and smaller. Just like it should.

I'm not talking about inverters, I'm suggesting he doesn't need to go down that route, just wire in a 12v ciggy lighter socket to recharge the laptop. No point going 12v to 240v, just to recharge a laptop.

What I then mentioned was that you can get multi-voltage chargers for AA and AAA batteries. One charger—multiple input voltages. If you are in a hotel room using 240v the batteries will recharge quickly, if you are relying on 5v over USB it will take forever, if using 12v a bit slower than 240v.

Inverter to motorbike is not used to me. The function of my inverter is to charge camera. 300w power inverter is enough to meet my requirement. Maybe you want to get more information about power inverter on bestekmall.

A AA/AAA battery cannot be directly connected to 12, 5 or 240 v .. there is some electronics going on in there.

What is required is power, say, 0.5 Watts for each AA battery.

A USB supply is 5v at 1 A max (or 2 A for hi power ones) .. that is 5 Watts max. Should be enough to charge an AA battery or 4 at the same rate as a 240v charger ... the problem might be that the 'universal voltage charger' is not very good at managing the input voltages. A better charger would result in very similar charging times. The better universal voltage thingys use a well designed inverter to get good efficiency. The poor ones use an inverter designed for a cheap retail price and get very poor performance.

An inverter can take 1 v and make it into 1,000 volts, so the voltage should not be relevant. Rather it is the charger/inverter performance that is relevant.

Can't find a link to the charger I have, but this is similar... https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Household...ide/B002IRP4T0

From the reviews, "The 600LCD [has]... the flexibility to work on various supply voltages 110 - 240V, 12V car adapter (supplied), and USB (lead (supplied). Obviously the 12V and USB mean longer charging times, but are a very useful option."

My experience was that 12v take a bit longer to charge than 240v, 5v takes forever.

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I now have a 2A 12V USB port for my KTM 690 which will handle both iPhone and iPad.