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Any options for car adapters and magsafe 2?

I picked up a GoalZero Sherpa battery pack and solar panels last year when I was using a Dell. It turned out that it needed a secondary adapter for that, and wouldn't charge the laptop, but it would power it and keep the laptop's battery from draining.


Now that I've moved to a Macbook Pro (late 2015) that's no longer an option. There is a power inverter so I could just plug in the regular adapter, but the power draw is so high and it gets so hot that sometimes it overheats. It also loses a lot of power in the conversion, so even though the batteries are roughly equivalent in capacity, I only get around a 30% charge on the laptop.


That's not really worth it for me, especially since I'm going to be bike touring and might only get a single charge from the panels on a day. With the extra 7lbs for the whole kit, that's way too much weight for the amount of power I can use.


These are the ports on the battery pack:


  • USB port (output): 5V, up to 2.1A (10W max), regulated
  • 6mm port (output, 6mm, green, hexagon): 12V, up to 10A (120W max), regulated
  • laptop port (output, 7.4mm, orange, square): 19V, up to 6A (120W max), regulated


The 6mm port has a second attachment that changes it into a car adapter style port. So that's potentially another option. Though I've read that there are some problems with the ones that do it directly, so it would be a _different_ inverter that I think would end up having the same type of power drain issues.


Thanks for any pointers on how to get things working!

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)

Posted on Apr 28, 2016 4:40 PM

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4 replies

Apr 29, 2016 4:51 AM in response to hereNT

I would not purchase that connector offered on ebay. The magsafe connector it proprietary to Apple and any one else using it is doing so illegally. I also have doubts that it will be safe foe your MBP, assuming it works.


This topic has come up several times on these forums and there is no simple and direct way of converting 12v DC to the voltage required for the MBP. Essentially you need an inverter to convert the 12v DC output to 120v AC and then you can connect your MBP charger to the inverter. As you know, there will be power loss in every step. A pure sine wave inverter would be best, but the MBP will work with a modified sine wave inverter.


Ciao.

Any options for car adapters and magsafe 2?

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