When i use my cigarette lighter adaptor, i get too much hash in my waveforms. Is there an adaptor that will not give me hash?

Thank you

Ray

You mean to power your laptop...?

I would avoid powering the laptop from the vehicle... you may end up with a ground loop which causes a large current to flow (which will fry something in the laptop or the Pico or the car).

Power your laptop from its battery or from a wall outlet.

Joe gave a good answer.  Thanks Joe   ;)

These type of issues are best covered in our Picogroup areas.

Thank you Joe, i will do that

Ray

Does that include powering it from an invertor? I still dont have a concept of ground loop down. Time for homework.

A place where potential exists between two ground points - like say, a circuit with a bias and one without. That cant happen with an inverter, right? Because the AC power is not going to act as a ground for the DC.

fisher, if you have a truck on rack with tire off ground, you can ground out fuel pump or whatever to any metal object in shop, like in another room, and it will make its way back through building ground to rack through chassis and back to neg of battery turning on pump,and pulling high current(wouldnt do this more that a few seconds), you wouldnt beleive how that trips people out, ..........tom has a post about this with ford cam/crank sensors using common ground scope,

How long should a fully charged laptop battery work? I talked to a computor guy today who said that it should work for 10 hours?

Ray

Ray,

It depends on the laptop and the load of course but, if the batteries are healthy, plenty of time for a long road test.  Pico doesn't use much power to run.

Never seen one that lasted 10 hours though.   :-?

ray, my compac had batt life brand new about 3 hours, now 2 years later has an hour and a half if that, i noticed when my battery started going bad the laptop started getting warmer than normal on bottom,......ten hours,was that lithium ion,sounds like he just got out of school

I would think that with advancements in the resent past it would be possible to get 10 hours on your battery if you remember to do a few things, first set your computer to the lowest power setting on everything, second set the computer to hibernate after 5 min of non use and third don’t use your computer just let hibernate for 10 hours or until battery dies.  
My new dell with a 6 cell battery at full power I will get 1.5 hours and if I turn down the speed I can get just over three hours.

Thank you for the info!

Ray