Tassimo won't work on inverter

Murv

Murv

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So, I had the outstandingly good idea of taking the tassimo on our recent Thames trip. Reasonable coffee with no faff and at 1300W will run fine off the inverter.

Day 1, produced a coffee, but then stopped with a 3 flashing red lights error.
Repeated this several times, googling suggested it was probably a knackered pump so it was binned and another one bought in Windsor. This one produced another coffee, before failing in the same way...

Googling suggests that there is some weird issue with running a tassimo off of a generator, but this is a 2KW inverter that effortlessly runs kettles, toasters, TV's and even a playstation with absolutely no problem. On shorepower, it's absolutely fine, on the inverter, it just won't work.

I don't know what inverter it is, but it's a large unit that's professionally installed, not one of the cheap ones and as I say, it has absolutely no issues with sensitive equipment. It makes no difference what the battery state is, or even if the engine is running. Fine on shorepower, returns an error off the inverter.

Any ideas anyone? Is there a gismo I could plug in (some sort of power smoothing extension lead maybe) or something that will get it to work?

First World problem, I know, but if I can get it to work it's an ideal solution as it can also produce tea & hot chocolate for the family.
 
superheat6k said:
Something like this might work, but the Amp rating must be the same or slightly more than the generator FLA. Wire into the Live & Neutral lines from the generator before the panel, or if your genny output is higher then just in the cable supplying the socket to the Tassimo. DO NOT OVERLOAD IT.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AC-115-25...234448?hash=item1c55a92bd0:g:-McAAOSwqrtWnlOo

Otherwise put the kettle on !
Click to expand...

Going to flag a big caution with this.... I think that unit might not cope.

The main reaon why things dont like inverters is that the inverters dont generate a clean mains source, its quite a tricky thing to do and you can usually get away with it.
More technical:
Domestic mains supply is (should be ) a fairly clean sine wave, the purest oscillation you can get. To generate this in an inverter needs a circuit closer to an audio amplifier than a power source. To make life easier then (from worst to better) you might just make a square wave, next up would be modified sine wave (square wave with a few more steps) then full, clean sine wave.

The filter above is more for killing noise generated by equipment, not for conditioning a poor supply.

Check the label on your inverter, if it does say pure sine wave (they will boast about it if it is) then there is a problem an electrician should look at.
 
Many of the new appliances are sensitive to power
Is your inverter a "true sign" and check the voltage 110 to 117 is usually all the computerized control board can handle .
I fried two boards in a dishwasher till
I realized the power was dirty and the cause
We bough a smaller true sign and set it to turn of between 110 and 120 V for the dishwasher and microwave rather than upgrading the main inverters
 
Modern kit with any form of electronics often relies on two key requirements for AC power. A pure sine-wave and an accurate 50Hz AC. It could easily be that your Tassimo is upset by being fed the wrong supply. For example, our hob requires 50Hz +/- 1Hz or it locks up.
 
Always best to have a pure sine inverter rather than a modified sine one... Lots of delicate electronic items dont like modified sine inverters

Pure sine are ofter more costly but much better and that may well be your issue
 
We have a Tassimo coffee machine on our boat and it seems sensitive to voltage. Sometimes with low shorepower voltages it produces only lukewarm coffee and a similar thing happens if we run it from the gennie with other appliances running at the same time as well. We now have a routine of turning other appliances off before we use the Tassimo. I'm not surprised it doesn't like being powered by an inverter tbh
 
Thanks for the advice all, much appreciated.
I thought it would have been OK as it runs the toaster and kettle just fine but it's obviously not!
I'll check the output spec of the inverter, but it's not worth the expense of changing it just for the tassimo if it doesn't meet spec. Still surprised it runs sensitive electronic equipment without issue, but maybe those devices are better regulated internally (I know very little about electronics)

I'll go back to the grinder and cafetiere for now, at least I know they work and can deliver a coffee fix in the mornings!
 
Ian MacAulay said:
A lot of the phones and things that are delicate have transformer plug and chargers that sort of filter in a round about way. Kettle and that are just plain elements
Click to expand...

Yes, of course, I hadn't considered that. The TV certainly is stepped down to 12V as it can be connected directly to a 12V socket and the playstation has a large transformer inline.
That must be the issue then, the sine wave from the inverter.
 
Murv said:
It's a 12V system, 2 X 110AH batteries make up the leisure bank.
Click to expand...

that is the problem !
your battery banc is just to small for the coffee machine,
theoretically with perfectly new battery's your bank could run the coffee maker for one hours (50% of the battery capacity)
but this would be with fully loaded battery's, and no other load on the battery's, re fridges lights, etc...

you could try to make coffee with a engine running, rpm slightly higher than idle, so your alternator could recharge the battery's,
but if the alternator is not minimum 100Amps, this would not work either

just as a example,
on my boat we have 630 Ah /24V domestic battery bank,
at ancher, the water cooker (1000W) almost alway's triggers the battery monitor alarm (battery voltage drops below 24V) but our battery's are well worn.
our domestic invertor is 5KW
(we have 2 x 5Kw invertors to run the stabilisers during navigation)
 
BartW said:
that is the problem !
your battery banc is just to small for the coffee machine,
theoretically with perfectly new battery's your bank could run the coffee maker for one hours (50% of the battery capacity)
but this would be with fully loaded battery's, and no other load on the battery's, re fridges lights, etc...

you could try to make coffee with a engine running, rpm slightly higher than idle, so your alternator could recharge the battery's,
but if the alternator is not minimum 100Amps, this would not work either

just as a example,
on my boat we have 630 Ah /24V domestic battery bank,
at ancher, the water cooker (1000W) almost alway's triggers the battery monitor alarm (battery voltage drops below 24V) but our battery's are well worn.
our domestic invertor is 5KW
(we have 2 x 5Kw invertors to run the stabilisers during navigation)
Click to expand...

Ah, OK, thanks for that. Still doesn't make sense to me though why it will run the electric kettle without issue!
Maybe I've just been lucky, and the batteries are only 15 months old so probably still in pretty good condition.
I did try it with the engine running to no effect, and with a few revs on it. I didn't try revving it any higher but to be perfectly honest I don't want to sit idling a 6L engine at high revs just for a coffee anyway.
The inverter will run the 1KW water heater just fine, but it obviously trips out if I forget it's on and try switching the kettle on. (I don't routinely run the water heater off the inverter, only if I forget it was on from shorepower previously)
Definitely time to go back to the cafetiere :)
 
The electric kettle is just a wound piece of wire so would be quite tolerant. Most devices nowadays don't use 'transformers' - they use switch mode power supplies which is the next step up. Most are quite tolerant of a square wave inverter. The leisure bank would be fine for the 1300W power required just not for long (approx 120(DC)A so 30 minutes, 50% battery capacity - not good for the bateries although how long does it take for the coffee to be made???). Therefore I don't think its a power problem per se, its the quality of the supply i.e. it probably doesn't like a 'square' sine wave and the Tasimo doesn't have a very good power supply and the frequency or voltage is outside its tolerance range (however it does have monitoring capabilities). So I think the pure sine wave inverter would sort it using the existing battery bank (but not for long and assuming they are of good servicability). Although rule of thumb - an inverter is grossly inefficient, especially as most devices you are inverting the DC to AC and multiplying the voltage and then back down again and smoothing the DC with all the losses that incurs.
 
Thanks for that, makes perfect sense.
The power consumption is acceptable, I would guess it's <1 minute to produce a drink so less than 5 minutes per day.
I'll investigate the inverter, but suspect it's not going to be worth changing it just for that.
 
Nespresso needs a pure sine wave though...from a bit of googling, anyway.

Actually, I hadn't realised that inverters were so cheap so upgrading it may be an option for the future :)
 
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