Anyone know if its safe to hook up a projector in your car?

[Quoctrung Bui]

One of my projects is to do a video projection on a beach in rural Maine. I want to plug my projector into my car via cigarette lighter using one of retail transformer for cars. Will this work? I'm afraid of drawing too much electricity.
Which cigarette lighter power supply is the best?

Sent from my iPhone

[Justin Payne]

Can you tell us more about the projector? The light source will be the primary draw of current, but some projectors have low-power LED's.

Justin

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[Pooka]

Check the power requirements on the projector as well as the power output of the transformer just to make sure the transformer can support it. I don't see it being a problem but a test run would be good. The only issue I could see would be blowing the fuse on the lighter. That won't hurt anything though, that is why the fuse is there.

[Dan Barlow]

On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 9:42 AM, Pooka <hardco...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Check the power requirements on the projector as well as the power output of
> the transformer just to make sure the transformer can support it. I don't
> see it being a problem but a test run would be good. The only issue I could
> see would be blowing the fuse on the lighter. That won't hurt anything
> though, that is why the fuse is there.

The lighter should be good for 10 amps at 12 volts, or 120 watts.
Likely the projector is more than 120 watts unless it is LED or laser.
You can get RV inverters that hook directly to the battery and give a
lot more power.
Best practices is to get a "marine cycle" or trolling motor battery
and charge it separately.
You can run a refrigerator for about 45 minutes on one of those...
-Dan Barlow

[Pooka]

One of the inverters I have (I believe I got it at Walmart) has the ability to go directly to the battery. Getting a second battery its a great idea though.

[Jon Singer]

Hi.

Briefly -- David Pogue wrote about car adapters a few years back,
and noted that there was one 450-watt device he particularly liked. I
got one, and found that it made the power supply for my MacBook
get extremely hot. Turns out that at least some of these devices do
_not_ produce a clean sinewave. I haven't built a filter for mine yet,
but I'm definitely thinking about doing so. Don't need to blow up
any $80 power supplies, don't need to risk damaging my computer.

Just sayin', just in case.

Best --
jon

PS: At 13.5V, 450 W is more than 33 Amps. If you pull that much
from your battery for a while, you will run it down pretty badly
unless the engine is running. Something you probably want to keep
in the back of your head...

[Alberto Gaitán]

How long is your projection's throw?

[Philip Stewart]

It seems like you want to see what the capacity of the cigarette lighter output is. It could be safe (imagine that you have fuses in your automotive electrical system, and that you are keeping moisture out of the system, etc.)--and still not work. I once had a car that would power almost nothing out of its cigarette lighter socket, for some reason--presumably wouldn't power the lighting of a cigarette, given that. Maybe this was a problem unique to that car, which I discovered late because I don't smoke.

Another device that should work is a power inverter, so called, which you could run off a car battery.

Phil

[John Yang]

or if you're in for some hacking, you can pick up an old broken UPS
with dead batteries and use some external deep cycle batteries. The
inverters on those give pretty good sine wave output that computers
are fine with compared to the small inverters sold in auto parts
stores. you can often find 'broken' UPS devices with just a bad
battery

[Gary Mauler]

Purchase a Honda EU 2000 from Mayberry sales.  You will be happy you did.

[Alberto Gaitán]

On 5/30/12 11:36 AM, Gary Mauler wrote:
> Purchase a Honda EU 2000 from Mayberry sales. You will be happy you did.

This is actually the best way to power outdoor projections. Especially
if your throw is long, the required projector will have to be relatively
power hungry.