[TriLUG] 12v power supply

[Rodney Radford]

First, a couple of questions, and a couple of suggestions:

* what type of computer is this - laptop, desktop, or bare PCB?  And if a bare PCB, what are the constraints on it (do you have one already you want to use, or you buying it, and if buying it, what are the minimum requirements of it?)

* is this truly a battery (and if so, what voltage/power), or is this vehicle power (ie: 12v from a possibly running car). If the latter, the power is definitely *NOT* 12v, as the average is typically 1-2 volts higher, but you will also get spikes in the 30-50v range - more than enough to wipe out any power supply not designed for vehicle power applications.

If a desktop system, the advice of using a 12v to 120vac converter is the way to go as they already handle the vehicle power characteristics and give you a nice 120vac you can plug your computer in.  Just shop around for a good price on one that meets your power requirements (plus about 50% extra for safety margin).

If a laptop system, what is the DC voltage of the laptop? More than likely it is more than 12v, so you would need a DC to DC converter to bump up the 12v to whatever your laptop needs. If this is the case, the easiest solution would be to use the same style 12v to 120vac converter to power the existing laptop power supply.

If this is a bare bones motherboard, or an embedded application where you don't want a full size desktop or laptop, check out http://www.mini-box.com.  There you can buy smaller motherboards, already in a case with a 12v vehicle input, or you can buy just a DC to DC power supply that will generate all the various voltages for your own motherboard as shown at http://www.mini-box.com/DC-DC. I have used a couple of their power supplies on a variety of battery backed PC motherboards ranging from hobby robots (running Linux, of course), to military-hard embedded devices designed for... nah, can't say.. (they may shoot both of us) ;-). The bottom line is that I have never been dissatisfied with any of their products and they have always been quick to respond to any questions I have.

That should be enough to get you started, but if you reply back with a little more details of your application, and perhaps someone else can fill in a few more helpful ideas.


-----Original Message-----
>From: WA Brown <brownwa at ftc-i.net>
>Sent: Jul 25, 2010 12:26 PM
>To: trilug at trilug.org
>Subject: [TriLUG] 12v power supply
>
>Where can I get a 12v power supply for a computer? I want to be able to run a computer from batteries.
>
>
>WA Brown
>-- 
>This message was sent to: Rodney Radford <rradford at mindspring.com>
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