My 7" screen flickers a bit when a bigger bass note hits when playing music. i have the power connected to the headunit's power, drawing from the same source. It works fine, except for the flickering. it's not the vibration, it's just the lack of power at impact. question is, can i put a little capacitor inline with the TV to stop this? like the ones at radio shak? any help?

 

The wire running to your equipment is too small of a gauge. A little cap isn't going to store enough energy to do any thing for you. Since both the amp and screen were run off the same cable its the worst possible wiring. Even a large 2-5 fardad cap is going to be drawn from by your amplifier way more than by the tiny screen. LCDs shouldn't flicker at low voltages. Sure sounds like you've rattled something lose inside your video screen in your effort to go deaf.

 

i don't have an amp running yet, i'm just talking about the struggle for power between my headunit and the screen. they are connected to the same power wire. when i say bass notes, that may have confused you. . . i wasn't referring to any amp, just bass notes from headunit directly to speaker.

 

OK but that still doesn't change anything except that it's the headend drawing too much power. You must have a very fine gauge wire running the headend - or the stock one which was designed for a head-end with tiny little built-in amplifier.

What happens is that as the amps in the head-end attempt to draw current (in ampheres) they "pull" on the supply voltage (pressure) which if the wire is of a large enough diameter just passes the "pull" onto the battery but this seems like it's not happening. If the wire is too small of a diameter the current surges causes I2R losses where the current heats the wire up and the voltage to drop. As the current demand doubles the losses are raised by the square of that double or 4 times the loss. Going to a larger diameter wire ought to help and should be a quick fix.

I use this chart often: http://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm

If you look down at typical 22 gauge wire it's good only for 7 amps which is a typical 30 watt headend give or take. Most better head-ends are going to want 10 amps worth of power.

 

thanks a lot. circuits wasn't my favorite class in college, obviously.

 

Here's another good reference.

http://www.the12volt.com/info/recwirsz.asp