Is my inverter fried?

Toast....

 

Well Midnight, seeing I don't know what I'm talking about according a few in another part of the forum I will still post one or maybe two reasons why this happened and how to fix it.

Outside of that, it may be toast but I reserve that determination for someone who can test it for you.

Inverters, especially the really cheap ones (cobras fall into that group) are made with simple new designs taking advantage of a whole new group of power controllers and cheap components that really make them a lousy inverter.

When chargers, especially ones without real transformers in them are used with these inverters, they tend to act as if there is a heavy load or something like that, which causes a lot of heat.

Some phone chargers are made with these new power controllers too in order to eliminate the heavy or balky old type of transformer. So in order for these to work and be cheap to make, these chargers with these power controllers derive their drive signals from the pure sine wave that comes off of the AC line in the world, it can detect 50 or 60 cps but when it is a dirty signal, this is where the problem is.

Make sense so far?

So when these things (the phone charger) tries to regulate the voltage within the switching network in the unit, and it is messed up, it seems to go into an overload mode and heat up, usually frying out in the process.

Back to the inverter for a moment. Cobra like Hahn and others (all come from the same place in china) seem to be a crap shoot in this case, you can have 50 good ones and then hit 20 bad ones in the same batch. The QA is really the fault of Cobra or the brander who is selling them.

On top of that is the issue of the product you are trying to use with it, I can see in some cases products that are not cheap (some laptop supplies) will create their own drive signals within the unit and handle dirty sine wave signals while mass produced chinese things like phone chargers won't.

The solution is one of two things;

get a better inverter or one that has won't have dirty sine wave. Quality matters. Cobra isn't quality - it is a brand.

BUT like I have done in the past, I just get a good quality 12 volt charger and use that, bypassing the issues of going from 12 volts to 115 back to 5 volts. IT is more stable and if taken car of, last a long long time.

AND to add that with the USB 12 volt chargers out there, I use them a lot, they are simple circuity which seems to be more dependable and stable, can be used with a USB to phone cord which is also cheap to get.

 

You win the award for the longest post today...lol..I couldn't help but tease ya sum....anyways, well said info

 

I've had fried eggs and bacon can't say i've ever tried fried inverters?

 

Yeah it is a bad habit. If I condensed it, then I tend to miss something important.