Any ideas on how to make a KICKR easy to use on the go from a car? Is the power draw low enough to use a 12 → 120 car converter? Will this drain the battery pretty quickly? Does anyone make a portable battery or have a recommended battery setup?
how about rollers? very portable and warms your tires up.
Works well for race warm-up, but looking more for a travel solution to do workouts on the road.
Any ideas on how to make a KICKR easy to use on the go from a car? Is the power draw low enough to use a 12 → 120 car converter? Will this drain the battery pretty quickly? Does anyone make a portable battery or have a recommended battery setup?
Will you really bad that far from a plug? If it’s that remote, you could likely just bike outdoors (gasp!) for a workout, even if it’s up n down a short hill or around a short circuit.
DCR has the details for how Sky sets their KICKRs up:
http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2014/01/2014-pro-team-powermeters.html
(Search for “12V” on that page)
.
ahh… I seem to remember watching TV on camping trips as a kid. You might not know what “TV” or “camping” are but basically we plugged a 110v box that showed moving pictures into an adapter that plugged into the “cigarette lighter” in the car.
Cigarette lighters are these things in cars that you would press in and it would use the car battery to make a coil hot which which you could light your cigarette. For some reason.
There is the potential that Wahoo is in the process of creating a portable battery solution…
Not often, but there have been a few times it would be nice, if anything just for the convenience factor.
Exactly what I was looking for thanks.
Any ideas on how to make a KICKR easy to use on the go from a car? Is the power draw low enough to use a 12 → 120 car converter? Will this drain the battery pretty quickly? Does anyone make a portable battery or have a recommended battery setup?
If you get a deep cycle RV/marine Group 27 battery ($80 to $100 at most retailers) and run it through the inverter, you’ll get about 2.5 hours of run time before you discharge the fully charged battery to about 50% capacity (which is about as low as you would want to discharge).
Based upon the data from the Wahoo site, it looks like the Kickr has about a 1.5 amp draw at 120V, so about 180W (or about 200W DC to account for the inefficiency of the inverter).
Most of plugin inverters should be able to handle that.
that’s an elegant solution, i guess you could just grab 12v right off the car.
I used the Kickr a couple times last year to warm up for cross races without pugging it in, it was good enough
To car battery and charge, the more we know about it power inverter. I am used to charge phone and laptop from using a 300w power inverter from bestek. Since I love travelling, so inverter is necessary for me to take. When we in the outside, we need a inverter to charge our common tools. If you want to learn more about this inverter, click bestek to know. Hope this point is helpful to you.
Thanks for this…
DCR has the details for how Sky sets their KICKRs up: http://www.dcrainmaker.com/...eam-powermeters.html
(Search for “12V” on that page)
This
The Kickr power supply is rated at 12V, 5A output. So, using a power inverter would be the best way to waste a crapton of power. Just make a custom direct-connect cord from a normal 12V car battery to the little plug that feeds into the Kickr. If you power it from the car, make sure that it is either directly connected to the battery or is connected to an always-on source that does not require the key in the ignition. A typical car battery could probably power 60 hours of Kicker time, but that would go down fast with the key in position 1 and crazy fast with the key in position 2.
anybody know the type of electrical connector that plugs into the kickr so I can make a small 12v battery system like sky has in that link?
anybody know the type of electrical connector that plugs into the kickr so I can make a small 12v battery system like sky has in that link?
It’s a coaxial power connector. I don’t know the size (I think it is one of the 5.5mm ones) , but you can measure yours to match it up. It is one of the standard types.
I made a cigarette lighter to coaxial power loom to plug my kickr into the car for warmups.
I used the Kickr a couple times last year to warm up for cross races without pugging it in, it was good enough
Interesting - never thought of that. Although the Kickr is a bit heavy to be lugging around
yea… I thought it sucked lugging around a kurt kinetic
I used the Kickr a couple times last year to warm up for cross races without pugging it in, it was good enough
Interesting - never thought of that. Although the Kickr is a bit heavy to be lugging around
What was that lightweight trainer with the magnets (think it was a kickstarter project?). Can’t remember.
Any ideas on how to make a KICKR easy to use on the go from a car? Is the power draw low enough to use a 12 → 120 car converter? Will this drain the battery pretty quickly? Does anyone make a portable battery or have a recommended battery setup?
Rather than using an inverter - which is going to invert DC->AC, you should ask Wahoo about the DC requirements for the trainer. The KICKR itself requires a transformer to convert AC->DC, so it doesn’t make much sense to go DC->AC->DC. You should be able to power the Kickr DC->DC.
The KICKR’s transformer converts standard AC to 12V-5A (max of 60W). 12V is standard car battery voltage. So it should be easy - and way more efficient - to power it directly. I’d be shocked if the Wahoo guys wouldn’t help you out with this.
But regardless, even with the losses, virtually ANY car power adapter (DC->AC) should be able to power a KICKR. Or, presumably, any other plug in trainer. The power required is just not that high.