[mdlug] 12V Overcurrent/voltage Protection

[Aaron Kulkis]

Peter Bart wrote:
> Good Morning,
>     I'm getting more and more stuff that has car chargers. The tipping
> point was my new netbook. I figured it had an inline fuse in the
> lighter plug. It does not, and neither do any of the other chargers I
> dug up at home.  I remember these car chargers having a small inline
> fuse, from days gone by. Am I being to paranoid? I'm thinking of
> getting some adapters from Radio Shack; with the fuses in them; and
> putting them on my car chargers. Fuses appropriate for the load of
> course. The specific charger I'm talking about is the Asus brand car
> charger <http://estore.asus.com/shop/item.asp?itemid=4446&catid=734>.
> It has a transformer brick to step up voltage to 13 volts and lots of
> references to supposed internal overcurrent/voltage protection. But
> nothing official. What do the great minds at MDLUG think? I should
> mention that almost every electric appliance in my house is plugged
> into some sort of APC surge arrester/battery backup/voltage regulator.
> My notebook power supplies have the small inline ones strapped right to
> the brick. Any thoughts?
> 

The cigarette lighter in your car most likely already
has a fuse, either 10 Amp or 15 Amp.