Popping sound and burning smell --- hopefully that's just a heavy-duty replaceable fuse burning out....
....Can you post any photos of the main electrical wiring looms/fuse panels/etc that are adjacent to your inverter? I'm guessing it's under one of your SMB's couches? Also the model number of your inverter will surely help some of the electrical wizards here make some tracks sorting out your issue.
Next question of course will be to figure out "why" something burned out....
Some basic questions:
1) was your van plugged in to shore power at the time? Or was the inverter running off of the van's camping (house) battery bank?
2) what else was running off of the inverter?
By the way:
If you were **just charging your phone**, you really didn't need to be running the inverter to do that, as you may or may not already know. The inverter consumes a lot of power to create 110V AC power from the van's 12V DC battery bank.....and then if you plug in a 110V-style charge cord for your phone, that's converting that 110V back into a DC current all over again for your phone to charge with.
Best way to charge a phone is to just use the standard cigarette-lighter-socket-style phone charger like you would in any car. (Apologies if you already knew that.)
Again, sorry if you already know this stuff, but I'll state it just for the general knowledge share of these posts:
Inverter best-practice use:
Inverters are (ideally) usually used only very briefly in most of our vans --- they're great for a short-term-use 110V item (like heating something up in a microwave oven for instance.) But if it's not being used, the inverter should be powered down. It consumes a significant/measurable amount of your battery bank's juice **just being turned on**, even with no load on it.
If you are plugged into shore power, or have a considerable solar panel bank and battery bank, an inverter can be left on in an "idle" mode indefinitely however.
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Mike T
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'95 Ford E250 RB30 PH
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