We just spent a weekend camping in the rain, with no power except during the 2 hours in morning and 2 hours in evening allowed by CG. I have a 5 year old son who wanted to watch a movie, and am curious how to accomplish that. There are no outlets in the TT that come from battery. I know, save the comments about camping, not watching TV, but if you have kids and it is pouring rain for three days, you would understand. So any ideas would be appreciated.
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RET Army , DW Donna , Summer (Furkid) . Class A, 2000 Gulf Stream, DIRECTV, YAMAHA 2400 GEN , TOW 97 Wrangler. Garmin GPS 2720 . "Living Our Dream". NASCAR FAN (20,18,11,29,31) Love CO & NM
Been there, done that. I have 2 6v batteries in series making 12v (I have Interstate U2200, Trojan T-105's are also good) and a 19" LCD with DVD player. Without too many lights or running the heater, I can easily get a one or two movies in without recharging. the TV/DVD combo only draws 65W and I power that off of a small 150W inverter plugged into the cig outlet on the antenna booster.
The 2 keys are the 6V batteries that are true deep cylcle batteries and the LCD TV that draws a whole lot less power than the tube type. Do a search over on Tech Issues, this has been discussed a zillion times.
BTW, we do the same thing when a camping trip gets rained out....that's why we have an RV....
We just dry camped this past weekend and easily got 4 or 5 hours of TV before we had a chance to run the genny.
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Jimfromvirginia wrote: We just spent a weekend camping in the rain, with no power except during the 2 hours in morning and 2 hours in evening allowed by CG. I have a 5 year old son who wanted to watch a movie, and am curious how to accomplish that. There are no outlets in the TT that come from battery. I know, save the comments about camping, not watching TV, but if you have kids and it is pouring rain for three days, you would understand. So any ideas would be appreciated.
We have two of these 12v outlets that came in the trailer. Maybe you could talk to you dearler about installing one or possibly how easy it would be. Maybe they know where some 12 volt wires are that would be easy to tie into.
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If you have a laptop computer that can play DVD's that will use even less power than a LCD TV and DVD combo.
You can charge the laptop with the inverter, and also if you do any sightseeing, you can also recharge while driving, then watch when at the campsite.
Costco sells a 500 watt inverter for only $30, and it will work pretty well. I would wire it to a new cigarette receptacle, with #10 gauge wire and a 20 amp fuse (that is good for about 200 watts). You might want to install a couple of receptacles, so you can plug it in to different places, such as on the dinette table to run a small fan, or an outside compartment to recharge a small electric scooter or electric quad for the kids.
If you can run a generator for a couple of hours, twice a day, then if your RV as a 45 - 50 amp charger, it can recharge the batteries fairly quickly. Hopefully you have a very quiet generator!
Fred.
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, DW Donna 
, Summer (Furkid) 
. Class A, 2000 Gulf Stream, DIRECTV, YAMAHA 2400 GEN 
, TOW 97 Wrangler. Garmin GPS 2720 
