{"id":22051,"date":"2013-01-07T11:46:22","date_gmt":"2013-01-07T16:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelswithmiranda.uskeba.ca\/?p=16706"},"modified":"2016-09-19T11:36:32","modified_gmt":"2016-09-19T08:36:32","slug":"just-call-me-macgyver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/just-call-me-macgyver\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Call Me MacGyver!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I did some more research about Macbook Pros and voltage before shutting down my computer earlier this morning and found information that led me to believe that I could still charge under slightly lower than optimal voltage, it just wouldn&#8217;t be as efficient.<\/p>\n<p>The motorhome engine battery puts out more than 14 volts when the engine is running. Could that be enough to charge my Macbook Pro while I was driving? Hmm&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>All of my inverters are designed to be hard wired to a battery, so they do not have a 12V plug. I had a one of those left over from when I added my <a href=\"http:\/\/travelswithmiranda.uskeba.ca\/?p=13637\">12V outlet in the study<\/a>, so I spliced it into my 300W inverter. I got into the cab, plugged in the inverter, turned on the engine, turned on the inverter, plugged in the computer and&#8230; voila! I got a solid hour of charging while getting to the next rest area, giving me 50% battery capacity.<\/p>\n<p>By managing my computer use, I will be fine for computer power while I&#8217;m traveling, but this is obviously not going to work when I stop to boondock for an extended period of time. So I will be ordering the 12V charger to be sent general delivery to a post office in the New Orleans area.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m feeling much, much better now that I understand what has been going on and am now confident that my battery bank is working as it should be! It&#8217;s wonderful to be sitting here with the solar array monitor telling me the batteries are fully charged and that the battery monitor and the batteries themselves confirm it!<\/p>\n<p>I called ahead to the Walmart just south of Charlotte that I was eyeing and they definitely allow overnight parking! They&#8217;re only a couple of hours away from this rest area, so I will spend several hours here and will leave around 2PM or so to avoid rush hour.<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow is the big day: Atlanta. I&#8217;ve done my research on the RVing forums and the consensus is to stick to the interstate&#8217;s centre lanes through the city rather than use the bypass and to go through at either midday or midnight.<\/p>\n<p>At the rate I am going, I could be in New Orleans by Thursday or Friday, but I&#8217;m just playing it by ear. I&#8217;m really enjoying these short driving spurts coupled with long pauses at rest areas, even if the semis are noisy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I did some more research about Macbook Pros and voltage before shutting down my computer earlier this morning and found information that led me to believe that I could still charge under slightly lower than optimal voltage, it just wouldn&#8217;t be as efficient. The motorhome engine battery puts out more than 14 volts when the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[635,614,5,9,3,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-north-america","category-north-carolina","category-rving","category-tech","category-travel","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}