Hello All,

My wife and I purchased our first drone a couple weeks ago.  We purchased a Mavic Air.  Our intended use is for hiking trips and road trips.  We  will ultimately need to charge the batteries on the go with a power inverter.  My questions is, do I need a true sine wave output or is a modified sine output okay?  I know DJI makes a car charger, but a power inverter can charge many things at once, opposed one at a time in the cigarette lighter.  I know somethings don't work as well on the cheaper modified sine wave, but does it matter so much the charger is converting back to DC voltage?

Cheers,
Andrew

I Think only pure wave can be supported. I had issues with I1 chargers before and this one for Mavic air looks similar.

You can buy a cigarette light Adapter so you can Charge multiple things in the car like this : CAR ADAPTER

Although a modified sine wave will probably do the trick since the power brick is able to accept 100-240V, in the long run it is much better to get the pure sine wave inverter. For small Wattage(250-300W) the difference in price is not very big.
On the other hand taking 12VDC  converting it to 110VAC and back down to 13.2VDC is inefficient. If we assume that the inverter at idle uses 0.5-1A this is equal to 6-12Watts EXTRA load on the battery (on top of the 50Wmax the DJI charger uses). If your car is moving that is OK the alternator can cope with that demand.
The DJI car charger outputs at max 4.54A instead of 3.79A (strange I know!!!) and you can get a non DJI branded on Ebay/Aliexpress for 1/3 the cost.
If you are also camping on location you can consider a small 2T genny. All generators output pure sine wave by design.

Kwinni Posted at 2018-3-1 23:29
You can buy a cigarette light Adapter so you can Charge multiple things in the car like this : CAR ADAPTER

When using these splitters, make sure to look up the maximum rated output of your cars cigarette plug, the maximum output differs from car to car, and you really don't want to exceed that limit.

For efficiency reasons, most power adaptors, including the mains charger for dji batteries are of the switching type. Although very robust electrically, the designer will have assumed a pure sine wave input to it. The modified sine wave from your inverter is not at all sinasoidal and you could think of the electrical effects on the circuits like driving your car over very rough roads. Some cars will take the strain perhaps indefinitely, a different make of car may fail. It is not an ideal combination using a non or modified sine wave power supply, but in most cases it works. Dji kit is robust and well designed, not a penny pinching cuircuit or components, so use it only as a last resort. I prefer the 12 volt dji charger over the inverter for those reasons.

Thanks for all the replies.  I know they make cigarette lighter splitters and such but we tend to have a lot of things charging at once while we drive, this added one more thing to it.  Looks like a pure sine wave inverter will be necessary.  We carry a small solar panel to assist with keeping smaller things charged (phones, action cameras, etc).  Our camera batteries, tablets, and other things require a little more than what the solar panel can feasibly handle, especially if it's raining.  Thanks for the input!

Does anyone have any recommendations for inverters?  Somewhere in the 600watt range?  There seems to be quite a lot of options in the $90-$150 range.  

To handle the extra load we plan to have a dual battery setup and likely will install a larger alternator.

Cheers,
Andy

ggeorgis Posted at 2018-3-2 00:47
Although a modified sine wave will probably do the trick since the power brick is able to accept 100-240V, in the long run it is much better to get the pure sine wave inverter. For small Wattage(250-300W) the difference in price is not very big.
On the other hand taking 12VDC  converting it to 110VAC and back down to 13.2VDC is inefficient. If we assume that the inverter at idle uses 0.5-1A this is equal to 6-12Watts EXTRA load on the battery (on top of the 50Wmax the DJI charger uses). If your car is moving that is OK the alternator can cope with that demand.
The DJI car charger outputs at max 4.54A instead of 3.79A (strange I know!!!) and you can get a non DJI branded on Ebay/Aliexpress for 1/3 the cost.

In the old days  yes all genneys put out nearly pure sine wave.

There are a lot of new ones particularly the smaller ones that generate  DC and then invert to AC.

Usually labeled as eco, as the rpm varies according to load.

Yachtsman Posted at 2018-3-2 06:32
In the old days  yes all genneys put out nearly pure sine wave.

There are a lot of new ones particularly the smaller ones that generate  DC and then invert to AC.

Without being an expert on the field I think you are refering to the inverter generators which afaik do produce AC then turn it to DC and use a second inverter stage to really clean up the waveform.
All generators throttle up according to load...

For safety reasons, please use DJI's original charging equipment,thanks.

Hello, I didn't want to start a new thread so thought this would work. Anyone know if I can use one of these Power Inverters to charge the DJI Mavic Batteries while camping. I would like to use one of these because it has an outlet to charge my inflatable mattress as well. Thanks!

This isn't about being right or wrong, more about what the expected experience will be. At the power levels you speak of, I'd get this one  https://invertero.com/best-3000w ... ied-sine-inverters/

Strictly speaking, the charger converts high-voltage alternating current into a suitable voltage (transformer, switching power supply, etc.) and then rectifies it into direct current.

You may now propose that once your battery is charged you can use the inverter output to charge it repeatedly. Yes you can do it , but this cannot go on forever especially if your system is not connected to the mains. For more details visit inverterreview.com