No way I'll gonna Pimp my Ride. LOL!
I do presentations on location. We shoot and edit events on location. The last few events I did was during the storm Sandy and some of places we went in the tristate had no power. One with generator, power fluctuates a lot. That is why I'm looking to supply my own backup power. Thanks

 

I have a few suggestions not exactly related to the batteries and the install of the inverter but to the hardware. Not sure what exactly you are doing but it may benefit you to spend some cash to make life easier.

Newer, modern LED TV's (or monitors) are much more energy efficient and draw much less power. They are also extremely light.

Those Apple xserve boxes are pretty old and slow and use a lot of power. You may want to just get a single more modern tower vs. use the xserve rack mount platform (unless you are clustering). The clock speed and CPUs offered on those things are really slow and older configuration so even a newer laptop would equally match the power (processing power) that an xserve box will put out. Where possible use SSD's instead of hard drives, older SATA-II SSD's are cheap and consume a fraction of the power that spinny HDD's do.

I'd look at a battery box such as an APC or similar like you would have at a home/office in the event of a power failure. It's going to be a lot of weight (three car batteries + battery backup for the hardware) but it will save you in the long run. The power coming out of 12v >> 120v inverters is not by any means "clean" in terms of running computers. If you run inverter >> battery back up (BBU) >> TV's and PC/Servers it will be much better in the long run. Also it'll give you the ability to run on battery for 3-5 minutes so if it hits the fan (like if you blow a fuse or drain the batteries and need to start the car to charge) it'll give you an "orderly" shutdown of your computer hardware.

Biggest question about the need for 3 car batteries (one for starting and 2 for the inverter) is whether or not you can idle and let the car run or do you need to drain or draw only on the batteries while you are working?

 

Get a truck battery, fits in the stock location and will be more than enough for what you need. So much more simple.

 

IMHO, I think you are going about this with good intent but in the end will cost a lot more than worth. In all of this you have, no one has mentioned the need for a larger alternator. Yes you could run multiple batteries that would be abale to be charged while either idling or running. Not a real efficient way to go about it. Even with newer screens that are more energy friendly. I would look at being able to power a few things from a built in inverter and then run say a honda EU2000i generator. They are extremely smooth running with a constant amp output. I would still run a line conditioner. Don't get me wrong you can make it all work by adding a larger alternator, extra batteris and inverters.. custom mounts fro screens, speakers etc.. but it is going to cost you. good luck. keep us posted sounds like it could be a really cool rig.

 

Note about solid state drives - I built a data collection truck for doing pavement surveys with lasers at 60 mph for a federal DOT grant. 250 amp stock alternator in a Ford E-350 with rear air. Charged batteries and ran 2500 watt inverter great. Hit a big pothole and trashed the hard drives. Went all solid state drives.

BTW, laser scans triggered from rotation of rear hub to a shaft encoder, 15,000 square waves per rotation, made laser scan every 4 mm of horizontal travel, captured that, plus GPS, plus video images of highway signs that were read by OCR and inventoried with GPS location. Software developed rejected home made signs, political posters, etc.

 

best bet is a little Honda 2000 watt generator. They take less space than the batteries and run pretty quiet. If you need to do it on batteries, just run a normal group 34 AGM battery for the Land Rover and get one or two deep cycle batteries for the inverter. Yellow, Blue, Odyssey and AGM are not deep cycle. Real deep cycles do not start engines. Look at Trojan for example. L16 batteries are a common size, about like a 5-gallon jerry can, and come in flooded or gel. They're usually 6V. Since your load is 120V, it doesn't really matter, right? Even if the inverter takes 12V, you just put two in series.

 

Why? That makes no sense. As long as you size the wire correctly you should be able to have as long a run aa you need.

 

Thanks 90'sDisco,
You are right but it will cost me more to get a similar size LED where I can use the money to upgrade to dual battery. I got a Xantrex Prosine 1800 which is a Pure Sine Wave inverter and can be used for computers unlike the modified Sine Wave inverters or inverters bought in auto supply store. I got mine from my brother in law 1/3 off the price when we had the storm and its a deal.
I still prefer the xserve over a laptop because of the nature of HD editing we do. I designed my xserves to be self contained and use 2 monitors for editing. We can capture/edit in the Rover while on the road and transfer the hard drive/s in seconds for presentations to the other xserve cart. I have a 300 watt old inverter installed already for that purpose but not enough to power all electronics. The last 8 core xserves are still much faster than an 2012-i7 MacBook Pros that has an SSD option installed. I guess if theres a power outage we can just keep the Rover on idle to be able to use the inverter to keep the battery charged or not and thats still a big question needed to be answered.

 

Thanks Jeffh,
I was considering a larger alternator which I found online at 320 Amps. Are those safe and wont burn out wires? I know honda generators are quiet and they are inverter type generators. My only concern is that I dont have enough space in the Land Rover with all the equipment inside, also we cant run it while we are moving from location to another. There are I guess restrictions with gas containers when using tunnels here. That, I'm not definite, just heard it once. Thanks and I'll keep you posted on the progress.

 

Hi Savannah Buzz,
Thats interesting especially the software developed to reject home made signs, political posters, etc. Is your rig look like Google or Navteq cars? Those look high-tech. But one amazing rover I saw on the highway was pulling a balloon shaped and looked like a missile. At a glance, it looked real.