rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Because it's noisy and anybody within earshot will be annoyed.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

You will want a portable battery station like the Bluetti Power Stations, models from 500 Wh on up.

https://www.bluettipower.com/collections/all

There are a lot of manufacturers who make something similar, and several professional landscape photographers who have them.

ialvarez50

Sorry, my friend. The idea is to make my own and spend as little as possible. I have been building desktop computers since the early '90s. These have always been ten times better and faster than anything you can buy at any store AND cheaper!
That is why I want to make my own unit. I just need a little guidance.

Thank you for taking the time.

Manglesphoto Loc: 70 miles south of St.Louis

Most portable generators do not produce a pure sine wave and no one wants the distraction of messing with a generator during a shoot.
Been there tried that!!!!

Manglesphoto Loc: 70 miles south of St.Louis

I can tell you you will spend more money messing around trying to make something work, than you will buying the P.C. Buff unit!!

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Opsafari Loc: Roodepoort South Africa

In South Africa we do get generators that produce pure sinewave, most generators are manufactured in the east so you will get one in the USA. But pending what type of photography you are aiming at noise can be a problem, generators are ALL noisy! However they are easy to carry or push but you always have to remember to carry enough gas with you and every 50 hours runtime you need to replace the oil. Battery backup is another way to go. Work out how many power you will need for the day or night shoot. This will give you an idea how much batteries you will need, then get a electrical wall charger to charge the batteries or get solar. With solar you need a solar regulator as charger for the batteries. You can make your own battery box with electrical charger input and solar charge input and an output for your sinewave invertor. Type of batteries is up to you as lithium batteries are great but damn expensive. Yes to build a setup yourself is rewarding and can be cheaper than buying. This type of setup are done by many overlanders to power their camping equipment especially in Africa and Australia.

ncralph

I went the DIY route a couple of years ago for the quirt, charge batteries going down the road convenience. It’s heavy and cumbersome. I realize you’d prefer to save some money and build your own but I have scrapped the DIY devices and use a Honda 2000i generator for when noise is not an issue and a Jackery 1000 for everything else. Both work beautifully and will produce “clean” power to the electronics.

Manglesphoto Loc: 70 miles south of St.Louis

https://www.paulcbuff.com/Portable-Power/ I doubt any diy will work as well, cost less and be in a nice package'

MrPhotog

It depends a bit on what kind of lights you are using: strobes or incandescent or LED.

And how much current you need.

Do you plan on one big power supply for three lights, or three smaller supplies—each one supplying a single light?

You may not need a pure sine wave inverter.
Most strobes take in 110 or 220 volts and change that to a higher voltage DC for the flash tube and a lower voltage for the trigger circuit. Square wave or modified sine wave can work just as well as pure sine wave. Ask the manufacturer.

I’ve run my computers, printers, and battery chargers on inexpensive (not pure sine wave) inverters in my truck and car for years. I’ve only once encountered a case where a pure sine wave inverter was actually needed to operate a delicate sound meter used for acoustic testing.

Incandescents and LEDs don’t need pure sine wave. If you want continuous light you can just buy 12 volt light bulbs, run ‘em off a car battery, and forget inverters completely. Consider LED or halogen automotive headlight bulbs.

How many watts, or amps, do your lights require? How long do you need them to run? That will determine battery size and weight.

Circuits for battery chargers: You can find plenty more on pinterest or just google them. Here is one link I’ve saved for future reference, but haven’t built yet.

https://pin.it/44bK12e

Every time I’ve started a battery charger project I have found surplus wall warts for far less money than the components. Shop at surplus electronic purveyors and you’ll find ‘em cheap, too. I paid $3 to American Science And Surplus (www.sciplus.com) for my last 6 volt battery charger. They are up to $3.25 and $3.50 now.

https://www.sciplus.com/adapter-12vdc--17amp--55mm-female-center-positive-plug-61747-p


For 12 volts it is hard to beat the trickle chargers from Harbor Freight when they go on sale. I think my last ones were $7.

There are plenty of battery options. If you want to go with an off-the-shelf inverter, then select batteries that give you 12 volts. That could be a sealed lead acid motorcycle battery or a car battery, or a lithium battery from a 12 volt cordless drill.

Again, I frequently hit American Science and Surplus for batteries:

This is what they currently have:

https://www.sciplus.com/12-volt--8ah--ub1280--51516-x-31116-x-2916-new-47434-p

Battery prices have been going up. Last time I bought, these cost half the current amount. For comparison, the same size 8 AH battery for my motorcycle would cost me $85.

Car batteries are relatively cheap, available, and easily charged. Make a nice box and bolt it to a hand truck. You can carry your lighting equipment on the same handtruck and wheel it where you need it. The car battery provides enough weight so that you might eliminate a light stand—just use a pole mounted on the handtruck to hold light, softbox, boom, or ??? whatever else you are using. This also can eliminate a cord between the battery power and the light.

If you are building your own inverter, design it around an easily obtainable battery type. Eventually you’ll need to replace it.

Circuits for inverters I’ve seen seem to use the 555 chip—probably ‘cause I’ve been reading about other uses for that timing chip.

The chip is cheap, but if you need the power equivalent of a wall outlet (1200 to 1500 watts) the transformers tend to be expensive. You might be able to salvage something from old computer power supplies.

If you want 1200 watts at 120 volts that is 10 amps output—but your input from a 12 volt battery is going to be 100 amps. That will be a big wire! Welding supply dealers sell the large gauge wire. The variety used for welding is more flexible than what is sold in hardware shops.

Cheapest option I’ve found though is jumper cables for cars. Keep, or discard, the clamp connectors that come with them, but a cheap set of jumper cables costs less than the wire alone.

Have you looked at the UPS (uninteruptible power supplies) sold for home and office computers? They typically have 12 volt, 8 amp hour, sealed lead batteries; a built in trickle charger; and a sine-wave output that is good enough for computers—which are actually pretty tolerant. They usually get trashed after 2 or three years when the battery dies, so you might get one for free.
I rewired one at my house to use a larger capacity (20 amp hour wet-cell) battery for a garden tractor. Many put out 300 to 500 watts, or more.

Good luck with your project.

Manglesphoto Loc: 70 miles south of St.Louis

I can tell you Alien Bee strobes will not run on anything but a pure sine wave I tried it, destroyed 3 inverters no damage to the strobe.Beyond that the cost of a pure sine wave inverter with the power needed was out of sight, for me anyway PC Buff was a little out of my price range for the number of times I would use it/them

bobmcculloch Loc: NYC, NY

How much power? for how long? How about one or more power packs used for starting cars, my newest is rather light, has various outputs and was inexpensive.

banders26 Loc: Illinois

I used test equipment that was very sensitive to the sine wave being pure. When no utility power was available I used a 2000 watt inverter, I do not remember the brand, it had a pure sine wave. I also used Honda generators, very clean power. Hope this helps

User ID

The small generators at our street events are extremely quiet, not interfering with acoustic music.

olemikey Loc: 6 mile creek, Spacecoast Florida

Amazon and others have pure sine wave battery banks (they also call them solar generators, camping generators, etc. but they are basically a small but powerfull rechargeable battery bank) from small to large (low watt hours/amps to high) with multiple outlets..... I have 2 that work very well, will power all sorts of stuff, self contained, and can be charged from AC/Solar/Generator - Like this: Portable Power Station 250Wh, Laptop Charger Lithium Battery Power Supply with 110V/250W Pure Sine Wave AC Output, DC USB Ports for Outdoors Camping Home Emergency. I paid $150/ea. for mine, compact, lots of power, charge easily, very portable. Should work very well for what you need.... I also have a quiet portable generator (and a big old genny, but it is loud), but for ease of use, portability, no fuel, NO NOISE at all, the power bank/power station approach is hard to beat.

Next on the list for my survival gear is a good set of larger solar panels....if the Russians can disrupt our fuel pipelines, they can also crash our electrical grid, in addition to the usual suspects, like hurricanes and other natural disasters..........