Startup Electrical Surge
 

Hi All. I'm in the process of installing a backup camera in the rear rotary emblem. The camera's manufacturer suggested that I use an inverter for pure sine wave output to power the delicate camera. This was due to the fact that direct wiring to 12v power circuit causes a spike or surge when the engine starts up.

It sounds plausible, but I haven't heard of anyone's carputers or other components (my "delicate" MP3 stereo, for instance) blowing up or anything.

Thoughts?

Sure....anything designed to work in a car at 12V is typically designed to function best in the realm of 14V, which is the Voltage when the car is running. Most products have an acceptable range somewhere between 7-18V. An example of this is the PSU I use for my carputer. It will maintain power to the computer as long as voltage stays somewhere in the realm of 7-18V. This is because of the inherent nature of car electrical systems.

So - the short and sweet - if it's designed to run on 12V, don't worry. If its not...than yeah, use an inverter.

From the sounds of it, if you need an inverter, you need it to be supplied with AC and not DC anyway. Thus, its not a matter of "electrical spikes" but rather, electrical incompatability. AC devices need AC....DC devices need DC!

Thanks devoid.

Actually, for maximum inefficiency, I was talking about running a 12v AC-DC transformer off an inverter, so that the inverter itself acts as a sine wave regulator. That would make it the worst of the DC-AC-DC setups. lol.

The camera takes a standard 12v dc car cig adapter ($2.50 Radio Shack type), but has an optional AC transformer block. I was trying to avoid the whole scenario, outlined above.

For that matter, would plugging a surge suppressor into an inverter even perform surge suppression?? The inverter IS grounded to the car chassis, but is that enough? Hmmm...

Plug it in to 12V after the engine is started and avoid all the hassel. My $.02 worth. :D