The joy of small details

As we know, I enjoy planning, researching and building solutions. I've seen some hideous 240V installations in campers with the RCD/Fusebox in awful positions. Look at this example below - it's in the worst position for smacking your head on or even using it, but aesthetically, it looks awful.

I like the idea of having a small 240V inverter for powering those odd little thinks like camera, phone, laptop & radio batteries. Yes I know you can get all manor of 12v chargers, but why reinvent the wheel?
Our cameras both charge off 110-240V. Because the laptop will be on all the time it will have it's own dedicated 12V charger, but as we saw on our previous trip - it can and did fail, meaning we relied on the inverter to charge it. So - now that we are confident of the need, lets get smart about implementation.

I've had own one of these for several years - it's a 300W modified sine-wave inverter. I can hear all you purists out there poo-pooing my MSW inverter saying it's not that as good as a pure sine-wave inverter. True, but for most appliances they work perfect. Think about it, regardless of how dirty the AC input might be going into a transformer, comes a perfectly clean stable DC voltage so I'm not in any rush to replace it.
I probably wouldn't use it for an AC/AC step down transformer, but outputting DC will be perfect.


I'm planning on integrating this into our fitout in such a way that it's secure, well ventilated and aesthetically pleasing. I'll extend the tiny LED and switch on the back into a switchable bezel which gives a confident on/off indication whilst looking tidy. I won't be 'extending' the 240V outlet but rather wiring a plug to a double powerpoint. Taking this two steps further, I wanted a double powerpoint but also a RCD or Residual Current Device. These are an excellent safety device which detects any imbalance in the 240V circuit... consistent with an electrocution condition.

I needed to do some reasearch as I couldn't figure out how you being electrocuted isn't just like a normal electrical load. After some reading, it identifies an electrocution condition because only one pole tends to get loaded up in an electrocution. So again, after deciding the need was worthy, it's now about the implementation.

See this - it's a twin socket (der) RCD power point. So, mounted flush on our timber fitout, provides two power points AND RCD protection - it ticks all the boxes.