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Here's a good one. I have an 18' Pontoon Boat. I could easily put a projector on a platform at the rear of the boat and fasten a 5' tripod screen to the deck in the front of the boat. I even have a four speaker sound system I could tap into. So, are there any 12 Volt S8 projectors?

Picture this, you are on the lake on a warm summer night. The water is like glass, so you throw on a copy of your favorite movie. Has this been done before?

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I don't think so, but there are power inverters that pull in 12Vdc and pump out 120VAC that will do the job:

http://www.tripplite.com/en/products/model.cfm?txtSeriesID=816&txtModelID=3610

This character will do 700W continuous: should be enough for the vast majority of S8 machines!

Thanks, Steve! Very nice looking equipment. I wonder how long it would run an ST-1200 if attached to a deep cycle 12 volt marine battery? I have a second battery on board I could use. Using the main motor cranking battery could be risky. Nothing like being out a lake in a remote area after dark and your motor not crank. The passengers get really anxious.

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If I remember right the ST-1200 is fused 3 Amps. The projector has to draw less than that to not blow the fuse, so thats 345 Watts absolute maximum at 115V the inverter needs to supply. It looks like the inverter is about 72% efficient so that's 473 watts out of the battery. This is about 36 Amps at 13V. My marine battery was rated at 110 Ampere Hours. So with everything in good shape you should expect at least 3 hours. This should do a typical feature and a few shorts without breaking a sweat!

-definitely the time to operate that lamp on "low"!

Cables between the aux battery and the inverter should be thick and short. Skinny, long ones will waste power and reduce your screen time. Really skinny ones will melt their insulation and maybe produce the kind of short circuit that'll land you in the newspaper the next day! ("Crazed boater causes marine disaster with obsolete video equipment!")

This inverter has a sinusoidal output. This is important for machines like the ST-1200 and many Eumigs because they have an AC motor. My old inverter had a square wave output and I couldn't operate appliances like these on it because AC motors can't process a square wave.

Steve

That was awesome!

Pat

Thanks!

Mom and Dad paid my tuition: I just showed up!

PS: The plate on my ST-1200HD says "300Watts", so we can bump that 3 Hour estimate up a little more.

So, it can be done. Three hours would work for a show. Muhahahahah! Now to come up with the extra cash to purchase an inverter. If this comes to pass I will take photos.

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The nice thing about it is it's generally useful: it can power a lot more kinds of stuff than just a movie projector. For example if you need to operate a corded power tool on your boat you won't need a hundred feet of extension cords to make it happen.

When I was a teenager I bought something similar and put it in my parents camper for when we were in a site without electricity. That way we could have TV and 110V lighting (...and puzzled looks from the rest of the campers).

-and that's why they sent me to engineering school!