going camping at a music festival...question

[wgdavis78]

hey guys...so me and some friends are going to a music festival here in so cal next week...obviously theres going to be music...however we were thinking of having me bring my vci , laptop, sound card, and some speakers....

only thing is we tryign to figure out how to power it all...without a generator...do you think one of those inverters woud work?

you know those thigns you plug into the cigeretee lighter or whatver that basically mimics a wall socket?

also do you think it would drain the battery of the car way down?

any ideas?

thx

[miyuru]

Which festival? Just curious.

Past that I've never done this so I dunno. I'd recommend getting a generator if you're serious, otherwise you risk killing your car battery I would imagine, especially if you're going to power the speakers through it as well (unless you keep the engine running...please don't).

[wgdavis78]

moon drop festival at la jolla indian reservation....yeah the generator is loud tho! rata tat tat!

[aiden]

i think the larger inverters are something like 175 watts.. i'm by no means an engineer- or even smart - but i think it would barely run your hardware, let alone push speakers

[steveboyett]

Find someone there with an RV. An RV gennie will power your setup fine.

[Wuz]

I went to an open air festival with a mate of mine, he had 6 X 9 speakers installed in removable speaker boxes in the back of his car along with a second battery in his trailer to power a small portable fridge off an inverter. The second battery was linked to the main battery in his car so while we were driving the beer was cold but neither battery was draining.

At our campsite we were able to play tunes from his car with cold beer for quite some time (don't overdo it) So i guess if you don't want to deal with a generator take a couple of "BIG" spare batteries?

We took a big couch in the trailor too - that was one of the most epic weekends of my life

[darrel855]

Radioshack has some decent sized inverters that run a direct line from the battery . Might not be the best option if you pan on playing more than an hour .

[drc]

Sounds like this was last weekend - hope you had a blast. Wanted to throw a couple cents in though -

Gennies can be super quiet nowadays - Honda makes some that are great and so quiet you have no idea they are running.

Marine (deep cycle) batteries with an inverter will run a small setup fine. I have run a Mac Laptop which was USB powering a TriggerFinger and an iPod, and firewire powering a Firewire 410; a pair of M-Audio monitors; and an Xponent for a few hours. I can't be sure how long one battery would run it though, we had a couple batteries there and bounced around between them through out the trip. Batteries are always good to have for stuff like that. It will run an iPod and small speakers for just about the whole weekend. Plus xmas lights, and other camp bling :-)

Don't use your car battery.

If you are thinking about real speakers and an amp - you need a gennie, but I doubt thats what you were thinking you could power from your car.

[Foreverhex]

I seen this post on instructable a while ago. It maybe helpful.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Camp...gSound-System/