Sony PS4 & Inverter question

Close.

Wattage you can use equals the rated amps of your 12-volt lighter socket (circuit) TIMES the voltage that your truck is sending to that socket. (W=V x I)

EXAMPLE 1: driver has a 20-Amp rated socket and his truck is putting out 16 volts when it is running (or an APU is running.) This guy can use 320 Watts worth of stuff on that socket. But lets say he drops to 12.5 volts when his truck or APU is off. Now he can only use 250 watts on that SAME socket before blowing the fuse.

Example 2: driver has a 10-Amp rated socket and his voltage is always 13 volts whether the truck is running or not. He can put a max of 130 Watts of stuff on that socket.

Big differences depending on the rated amps of the socket, and how good the batteries (or alternator, or APU) are on the truck.

If you blow a fuse, always replace with the same sized fuse.

With that said, if you are plugging a 300 or 400 watt inverter into a 15 amp or 20 amp socket, you'll run a PS4 and a monitor fine unless your truck battery drops painfully low.

 

You are correct. Technically you could plug a 1000 watt inverter in there (although this would be nonsensical because the truck circuit itself will only support 280 watts before blowing a panel fuse.)

So in your case (which consists of very common numbers in newer trucks these days) a 300W or 400W inverter will supply more MORE wattage than the truck circuit fuse will support. So as long as your LOAD stays under 280 watts you are good to go.

The TEMPTING cardinal sin that (believe me has burnt out more than one electrical system out there) is to blow, like a 20 Amp fuse and then put in a 25 Amp - "just squeezing a few more watts was all I needed." Or putting a 20 Amp fuse in a 10 Amp circuit. You get the point.

Finally - yes the "LOAD" will pull on the inverter, and the inverter will pull on the AMPS of the truck circuit accordingly. But it does not run "continuous" just because the is CAPABLE of "continuous." It will only raise the current (amps) on your truck circuit to what you are telling it you NEED by plugging stuff in. A 300 watt inverter will run your 150 - 200 watts of demand just fine with no risk to the 20 Amp truck circuit. In fact you'd still have 50 to 100 watts of head room there.

Just remember, I have ran data monitors on truck circuits and there can be wild jumps when certain things happen (like truck starts, APU starts, refrigerators turning on, etc.) So, like (depending on the truck computer or the APU computer) I have seen 1-2 seconds at the moment that the truck or APU starts when the voltage drops to like 11 volts for a moment (just an example.) So if you're sniping away in BF4 gleefully pulling 250 watts back there and it momentarily drops to 11 volts for a second - blam, you just popped a 20 Amp fuse. IN that scenario you would not actually hurt anything other than the fuse. Any quality inverter, game console, wires, etc will be fine because they are actually capable of much higher than the "rated" numbers before catastrophic stuff happens.

 

Also know that depending on the system, sometimes when the truck turns on automatically, or if you start it, if the batteries are low enough, inverters tend to restart, thus turning off anything connected to them.

And while a pure sine inverter is considerably more expensive, they are easier on electronics than truck stop inverters.

 

What TexTrucker said .... for electronics get a pure sine wave inverter. The truck stop models are modified sine wave and are not intended for most electronic circuitry, such as laptops, battery chargers, TV's. They will work but eventually the devices will fail well before they should.

 

In order for that PS3/4 too work, you have to use a pure sine inverter. The Xbox will work off of either type of inverter.

 

Not true. Before I got a pure sine, my ps4 ran just fine.