Question Re charging camera and laptop batteries

Someone has a problem when they charge a battery from a Modified Square Wave Inverter and people conclude that any charger connected to any MSW Inverter will end in catastophe.

The charger could be a cheap and nasty design or the Inverter could be faulty.

Most people have no problems running chargers off MSW Inverters

btw "Modified SINE Wave" is a con job by the marketers too fool customers into thinking that their basic inverters are almost as good as a Sinewave Inverter. The output from an MSW Inverter looks nothing like a Sinewave - they are Modified Square Wave Inverters.

Why go from 12v DC to 240v AC and then back to approx 19V DC????? Plus it wastes energy.

You can buy car chargers for both your laptop and camera batteries.

I have one for the laptop which plugs into the cig lighter. It is just a transformer which goes from 12v DC to 19v DC. The lappie is an ASUS not that it would make a difference.

My camera uses AA batteries (easier to find replacements then Li_ion) and my battery charger can plug into both 240V AC and 12V DC.

Jaycar and Tricky Dickies sell them.

I think a lot of the issues are not so much the battery but what the charger/power supply does with the incoming wave form. Computers need fairly clean power so there chagers and power supply tend to be able to deal with the nasties from a modified sine wave inverter. So most laptops seem to be able to deal with this type of wave form and work correctly.

Some other types of chargers do not do a very good job and it appears to shorten the life of the battery.

This is not scientifically proven but an observation of my own experiences.

These days I use a pure sine inverter for the video batteries, disposable batteries for as much as possible.

Plenty of people use modified sine inverters without apparent trouble but I have knackered any number of rechagable AA batteries that way. Many have not survived a 10 week trip even though they were basically new. As I said I think it has a lot to do with the quality of the charger.

I suspect you will get any number of opinions.

Steve

I keep it as simple as possible and have a car charger for the camera battery and a 12 volt power supply from Jaycar for the notebook.

No hassles and works!

I use a Projecta 90 watt power supply for the laptop $69 at Battery World and have a 12 volt car charger for my Nikon Camera batteries. $40 on Ebay. If you are worried about the laptop battery take it out and just run it off the power supply.

As other mentioned cleanest and easiest way is to have dedicated 12V charges for your equipment. Trouble here is if you have another camera or another laptop more likely that you need yet another charger, while with 240 inverter solution is universal. AFAIK MSW inverter (how true that in fact they are modified square wave ones!) will not damage your battery or camera/laptop, but rather will not work at all, bow fuse or damage charger. Again as said before it is a lot to do what charger made of. No one will answer you this question due to enormous charger/inverter combinations and you have to try by yourself. Connect everything together and if your charger does not get any hotter than as from main it should be OK, many people use them without much trouble. I personally, however, ditch cheap MSW inverter in favor of PSW one after former refuse to charge my laptop, even considering that laptop power rating was much smaller that inverter one.

Cheers
Serg

Drop into a Dick Smith store (IHNA) - they seem to have something for every need - I bought a 12 volt charger - cig plug in - switches through a number of output voltages, plus various plugs to mate with various appliances. As they say above, keep it simple.

Cruiser,

If the laptop runs successfully from a modified sine wave Inverter, there will be no damage caused to your laptop.

When using an Inverter, you are still using the standard switched mode power supply you normally plug into 240 volts. This power supply will filter out any "dodgy" voltage.

Some laptops will not run from a modified sine wave inverter at all and in this case, a pure sine wave Inverter will be required.

Therefore, an Inverter of 300 watts is a very practical, multi-purpose device to run the laptop and provide power for your camera battery charger, etc. A modified sine wave is adequate for most circumstances and considerably cheaper than a pure sine wave jobbie.

Just a point of issue in regards to 12 volt power adapter usage as an alternative. (but only for powering the laptop)
Some laptops (eg Dell) can be powered with a suitable adapter but you cannot charge the internal battery.

To charge a Dell laptop battery while powering the laptop, you need a Dell brand auto/Air adapter.

G'day Greg.

You say "The laptop will mostly be used to simply store and backup my photos."

If you can do without the laptop other than storing the photos, then leave it home.

You can buy top quality Sandisk 2mb cards on eBay for about $14. On my last trip I took six cards making 12mb, almost the size of my previous desktop computer.

You're better off having several 2mb cards than one 16mb, so that if something goes wrong, you're eggs aren't all in the one basket.

I'll bet you wouldn't take as many photos on a trip as I do. I seldom delete any photos.

I travel on a motorbike with a cig plug wired in. I take two 12V chargers, one for the camera battery and the other for the sat phone.

Best wishes,
Laurie.

Thanks so much to everyone who replied.

As I already have an inverter I will try it on the laptop and camera charger. I was apprehensive to do this before in fear of damaging something.

Regards Greg

Greg,
Charge the relevant batteries with the Computer turned OFF and the Camera battery out of the camera in it's own charger, supplied with the camera.
Mainey...