LUVTruck.com

I picked up a 79 4x4 a few months ago (currently having it's engine rebuilt) that came with a regular little fiberglass camper shell.

I was going to toss it at first but I thought of maybe keeping it and painting the whole truck and the camper some kinda dark green.

I would like to do some light off-roading and some camping (just me and my girl and maybe the doggies too).

The only thing I wanted to add to it was a mini PC with a 19 inch monitor. The mini PC only draws 35 watts max and the LCD Monitor says 1.5 amps. I don't intend to hook up to Wfi in the middle of no where I want this to play movies and music, so I'd like to have the power to do this for a few hours without having to rev up the engine constantly. I was even wondering if I might be able to use the mini PC as my sound system since I have no stereo in the truck now. If I do this would I use car stereo components (amp and speaker) and run them through the truck's power, or get some sort of PC speakers (Bose or something that won't sound like shit) and run them with the power invertor? I have seen how they hook up all these crazy systems with a PC or an XBOX on those TV shows but either I wasn't paying attention or they don't get specific about the best way to power a PC, LCD Monitor, and maybe and external HD in your car/truck.

I was wondering what I would need to power this? A power invertor? An extra battery? Both? The wiring should be simple I just need to figure out the power source.

This is a tricky one. In my opinion, batteries still haven't come far enough along to rely on them completely over a multi-day trip, given the often-underestimated power consumption of typical modern gadgets. Between the 35w machine, 70w monitor, 10w or so for your cellphone chargers you're pulling a little over 100w. This could easily double if you use the auto sound system. Even a modest bose desktop speaker system will likely pull more than 100w, unless you keep it rinky-dinky and take it easy on the bass.

Anything is possible, but you said you wanted to keep it simple

...so within those bounds, from most-ghetto to most-reliable, here's what I'd do:

1) Bring 2 12v batteries and an inverter with at least 30% more capacity than necessary. Consider a speaker system with muuuch lower wattage. Crappy desktop speakers, even. It's like AM radio, but who cares. The cost of good sound is too high when you're off the grid. You'll make it through the weekend no problem on 2 batteries, so long as you're out & about, not watching movies all day long. This is very hard on the batteries, and even if you've got a trickle-charger back home, they'll die faster and faster each cycle.

2) Integrate those batteries into your truck's charging system using a dual-battery kit, allowing you to recharge using engine power when needed. RVs typically have several aux 12v batteries that do just this. I'd get a kit that has decent power consumption gauges instead of a 'low' light.

3)Gas generators are getting reeeaal quiet nowadays. You could have one for about the cost of 2 new 12v batteries, and produce 400w at 0.2 gallons per hour (800w max). That's enough to splurge on the sound system you want and have sufficient power left for a bloody flood light.

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75 Mikado G180/4sp Desert Tortoise

Thanks for your input, I was thinking about a generator too just haven't really checked out the prices and such. Do you know a good one that's quiet?

It would probably not make sense to try to permanently integrate the PC's sound into the stereo like that. I can always get a stereo with a headphone style 'aux in' jack and then connect that to a straight line out of the PC's speaker output for when the engine is running and I'm running some kind of auto sound system with amps and subs etc. The stereo would basically read the PC as an mp3 player (with 1TB of space for music) then.

I could probably get one of those ipod accessory bluetooth wireless speakers (jawbone or logitech) to connect to the PC which are battery powered for movie watching in the camper when the engine is not running.

I wouldn't really be using this stuff all day if I was actually out camping somewhere just a few hours (1 movie) at most when it's dark maybe.

Didn't mean to imply that, sorry. I just meant to say that regular ol 110v PC speakers will generally consume less power than auto speakers and it would be wise to avoid using them on battery power if it's practical. I'd just plug them in to the inverted AC power source and keep the integrated auto sound completely separate from your camping kit. Plugging into the aux jack is a nice idea, but personally, I'd avoid using auto speakers on battery power for any extended period of time unless I had auxiliary batteries integrated into the truck. It'd work fine with just the one, really, but it's tuff on it.

I don't know about any specific generators, sorry. I'm in the market for one too, so update this thread once you solve the problem and let us know how it worked out.

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75 Mikado G180/4sp Desert Tortoise

you could find yourself a good quality deep cycle battery but they are not cheap for one that will handle the load over that time period.... removable solar panel on camper top to help keep a deep cycle battery charged up while sitting? really depends on how much you want to invest in practicality for it and how long it needs to be able to go between charges from the motor

you can look at a lot of the off grid solar sites they have a lot of good calculators for finding how many amp hours a battery will need to be rated for to handle a load over time even if your not going solar.
total of 100watts is 8.3 amps @12V so a 55 amp hour optima blue top battery could handle it for 6 1/2 hours before needing a charge or it would get too low.

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Luvless
1980 Mikado-Sold.

1993 Lexus SC400 my Daily
2004 Yamaha WR250F my new love in life
2016 Toyota Camry my girls ride

Personally,I'd talk to an RV Tech.....JMO.

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"You can't please everyone,so you've got to please yourself"

Thanks for the tips guys!

Off the grid, that phrase always reminds me of Hank Hill's crazy neighbor Dale. Solar sounds cool, I actually thought about doing something like that too.

I sometimes post questions on here that can readily be found on Google or by talking to this tech or that tech, but I like to have real world experiences/recommendations from fellow LUV owners.

That being said I actually do know an RV tech of sorts, thanks again!

I like the solar panel idea! I wonder what the charge time would be, compared to that 6 1/2 hour useful life? Could a single day of mild/decent sun get it all topped up?

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75 Mikado G180/4sp Desert Tortoise

depends on where your at, there are maps online that show the daily average hours of full usable sun for solar power, or the amount of power available within a given surface area in a day.
as an example a 120w solar panel @ 12v would be charging about 10 amps in full sun, for 4-5 peak hours a day unless your far north, would be like hooking it up to a battery charger for a few hours on fast charge.
one of the solar maps
http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/map_pv_n ... lo-res.jpg

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Luvless
1980 Mikado-Sold.

1993 Lexus SC400 my Daily
2004 Yamaha WR250F my new love in life
2016 Toyota Camry my girls ride

If you were to put a 120W panel on a vehicle would you need an invertor, transformer, or some type of regulator? Or would the panel go straight to the battery?

you would want a charge controller to keep it from overcharging the battery. and an inverter from the battery which would provide your a/c outlets
check this out tons of information about solar systems and designing one
http://www.leonics.com/support/article2 ... 12j_en.php

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Luvless
1980 Mikado-Sold.

1993 Lexus SC400 my Daily
2004 Yamaha WR250F my new love in life
2016 Toyota Camry my girls ride

Thanks for that link!

I did a quick search and just found a bunch of stuff for sale.

welcome, there are tons of sites with a lot of information about everything to do with solar power
so what are you thinking about using?

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Luvless
1980 Mikado-Sold.

1993 Lexus SC400 my Daily
2004 Yamaha WR250F my new love in life
2016 Toyota Camry my girls ride

I wanted to put some sort of roof rack on the camper shell anyway so maybe a single 120w cell and whatever charging regulator I need to keep the battery charged. From the specs I saw on 120w cells it seems like it's just about what you would want to charge a battery as far as amps go so I'm not sure about the charging regulator but to be honest haven't shop-searched that yet I only looked at the cells. I have a small power inverter already that hooks up with clips (400w continuous 800w peak) and I think that should be enough to run a small PC (it uses a laptop style brick power supply) with a 19 inch monitor, and some phone chargers.

I took a look at generators and I would never use one enough (or in the home) to justify buying a Honda, so I looked up the cheapest one they have at HFT and it's like $130 for one that will do 800/900 watts for 20 hours on 1 gallon.

That's a lot cheaper and should be fine for the kind of equipment I plan on using. I don't plan on using power tools, a space heater, microwave, toaster oven or anything crazy like that.

I do like how the solar set up can be it's own little grid separate from the vehicle's own electrical and charging system and doesn't need to burn any fuel to provide power but it's looking a bit expensive right now, the cheapest 120w cell I found online was actually the same price as that cheap little generator and I don't know enough about solar cells yet to know which ones blow or not.

I did find this though:

http://shop.rvsolarnow.com/aboutus.sc

i have a hft 400w 800w peak inverter i got a while back on clearance for under $20 bucks. first one lasted less than 5 minutes (shocking for a $20 inverter right? ) fried a fuze and it literally fused itself to the circuit board, it wouldnt come out and i was only running 1 27w cfl lightbulb to test it out so i got a replacement for it, i mostly use it to run a couple cfl lights camping, phone charger etc

one of their generators wouldnt last like a honda would but im sure if you picked it up for cheap with a warranty for when it did crap out you would be fine. would recommed not maxing it out on power but with what you plan on using if for i dont see much over 150w of draw so that may be the better option for you depending on how much you plan to be camping and using it
solar is spendy but will last a lot longer than a hft generator, the panels if kept in a safe place will last you 20+ years, during which time you wont have to buy a drop of gas for a generator cool thought right? only thing that will really wear out in a solar system is the battery and if it isnt heavily used and cycled down low on charge it will last you a good few years. you should expect to spend between $1.20-$1.50 per watt for a low priced solar panel, ebay came up with a 120w panel with a 25 year warranty for $200. cheap 15 amp charge controller from $12-30, battery is what these days $75 for one with a few year warranty? so overall somewhere around $300 bucks. and you would have 4+ years of warranty for the soonest thing to worry about.

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Luvless
1980 Mikado-Sold.

1993 Lexus SC400 my Daily
2004 Yamaha WR250F my new love in life
2016 Toyota Camry my girls ride

I did read a lot of reviews on the HFT site where people had to add loctite to pretty much all fasteners to keep them from vibrating loose and also said all their generators come with garbage for spark plugs. So their generators sound like they require annual maintenance. If I were to get one there I would use their warranty for sure.

Solar is sounding better and better the more I read about it and the more you tell me about it. I have read a few stories recently about new types of cells, like transparent ones (for windows) and some that are made entirely of carbon and are much more efficient. I would imagine it would take years for new technology like that to hit consumers though.

they even have flexible ones now
do some reading about different systems and such and see what you come up with that works for your price range and power needs. they are making solar parts cheaper and cheaper to try to get more people to start using them so there are deals to be found, even tax breaks for using solar power

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Luvless
1980 Mikado-Sold.

1993 Lexus SC400 my Daily
2004 Yamaha WR250F my new love in life
2016 Toyota Camry my girls ride