Even though today’s electrical appliances are increasingly often self-powered, especially the portable ones you carry around when camping or holidaying in summer, you do still sometimes need a source of 230 V AC – and while we’re about it, why not at a frequency close to that of the mains? As long as the power required from such a source remains relatively low – here we’ve chosen 30 VA – it’s very easy to build an invertor with simple, cheap components that many electronics hobbyists may even already have.