Replacing All of Those Pesky Power Adapters? 13
bobrobins asks: "I'm sitting in a hotel with a desk full of chargers: laptop, mobile phone, walkman, camera, electric razor in the bathroom, and a laptop supply for the plane, oh and one for the new sony speakers. Before you say too much I've been on the road for a long time and need them all! There must be more gadget geeks out there with a better solution, really all i need is a single charger/power supply that can charge all of these maybe 2 at a time. Any ideas appreciated - my back hurts from lugging this lot around!"
New Power Standard (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:New Power Standard (Score:3, Interesting)
Just be sure to fuse the connection around 6 amps or so. There should be a diode inside the laptop in case the polarity is reversed, so that fuse is necessary. Be aware that switching power supplies will draw more amperage when the voltage is lower. The only two exceptions is the low voltage alarm that will be triggered before the CPU is starved of voltage required for proper logic levels or the high voltage SCR "crowbar" which will clamp down on dangerously high levels.
Oh, I suppose experimenting with crude power feeds to your delicate electronic equipment will weed out inferior designs. Great experimenting on cold winter mornings. The worst that could happen is you could start a nice toasty fire to warm your hands and lap with.
Re:New Power Standard (Score:2, Interesting)
Steve.
Targus universal adapter (Score:4, Informative)
No affiliation with them, just a customer.
Not going to find an exact product (Score:5, Interesting)
I've wanted something like this myself--but not for nearly as many devices. The basic problem is that there isn't really any standards across all manufacturers or devices. Think about your power requirements in more detail:
Regardless, only you and maybe 50,000 other people have those exact same devices. For a company to design something for such a small market, they would need to charge an arm and a leg (and then pray people would buy it). Most people just deal with all their chargers.
Most people. But you're a nerd, geek, whathaveyou. You can't have all these chargers because you know there's a better way. And you're right.
Okay, my problem was that I had a laptop, nice external speakers, a small 5-port 10/100 switch, and my Palm. The laptop needed 19VDC at 75 Watts, which was by far the most demanding item I had. I picked up an electronics book that showed how to make a good AC-DC power supply from the library and then got a Jameco [jameco.com]catalog and worked out all the parts I'd need. I ended up needing a really big board for just all the parts to the 19V supply, but I could sqeeze in the other supplies I needed (5V and 12V) without too much trouble. Then, put the whole mess into a vented box and into my laptop bag. Now I just plug my bag into the wall and everything starts working. The whole deal probably cost me a hundred or so, but it sure makes everything look nice.
Difference between charger and power supply (Score:2)
1) Charge various batteries
2) Supply low voltage to sundry devices
The charging batteries is going to be the toughie, and I'd suggest you give up there. If your device charges it as long as it's in the device and the device is plugged in, then you only need a single power supply that will supply a range of voltages.
The only problem to overcome with that is that you might accidently set the variable PS to the wrong voltage/polarity, or that some of your devices may require current limiting (some devices depend on he wall wart's ability to only deliver xxx mA, though they are getting rarer).
This is a business nightmare, since my device would be breaking all the consumer's items.
About the best solution you can do is to buy lighter/car/airplane adaptors for all your devices (which should be lighter and take up less space) and buy a 2 or 3 output 12V powersupply with lighter outputs (such as those from the venerable, though cheesy, RadioShack). It won't take up less space, and overall may not be lighter than what you're doing now, but that's really as far as you can take it without taking responsability for hooking a device up incorrectly to a more generic supply.
I could, however, design a two output supply with an LCD and a few buttons. You hook it up to your computer and preprogram various voltages/devices (including polarity, overcurrent protection, etc). Then disconnect it. When you want to use it, connect a cable between it and the device, and choose the device type from a simple LCD menu. It would verify that the proper device is connected (ie, the shaver generally has this resistance, the laptop has a lower resistance - non-invasive type of stuff) and it would output the correct voltage. If the current goes over it can disconnect and display an error, check the polarity, etc.
But that would be pretty close to the limit of what you could expect, and you'd still have to be careful connecting it to your devices. Imagine a device about the size of 3-4 handhelds stacked on top of each other with two outputs, a universal input (90-250VAC), two wires, and a bunch of connectors. I'd expect it would be in the range of $100 - $200, and probably only in kit form since UL and other certifications are thousands of dollars.
If that's what you want, no, there isn't anything like it on the market. If you're willing to pay that much, then you can probably get someone to build it (such as me
-Adam
"It's pretty funny, actually. It all started when I thought inflammable was the opposite of flammable..."
Funnily enough.. (Score:2)
My problem is the number of different power adapters on stuff linked to my computer; I have an adapter for:
- Speakers
- USB hub
- iPAQ handheld
Each of these requires their own power adapter, generally on 9V. This doesn't even cover the adapter for my phone charger and Zoom effects pedal.Now, my idea would be to have one adapter to power all three devices at the same time. I already have one of those "universal adapter" type things for the Zoom, but that would only do one at a time and it isn't powerful enough for the iPAQ (it has a high requirement, probably mainly to charge it up quickly.
I know enough about electronics (I think!) to build one myself, but by soldering skills aren't too hot and I don't fancy burning out my iPAQ! What I want is a product that you can drive multiple devices from with different voltages on each cable. Any ideas? I did a web search earlier, but Google didn't through up anything obvious with my searches.
I have...er, had...this problem with my desktop... (Score:5, Informative)
1. ZIP Drive - 5VDC, 1 amp
2. Scanner - 15VDC, 1 amp
3. Phone - 12VDC, 300 milliamps
4. KVM Switcher - 9VDC, 600 milliamps
5. Monitor fan - 12VDC, ??? milliamps
Ok, so what I needed was something that would supply at least 12VDC, at least 2 Amps worth - if I could get 5VDC at an Amp or so, that would be cool, too. So, I started looking.
Here in Phoenix we have a place downtown called Apache Reclamation - as many of you know, this is a favorite place of mine - anyhow, one day I was there, I managed to find the near perfect power supply - It was some kind of Sun workstation switching power supply, and it had 12VDC and 5VDC outputs, several amps each, plus a couple of funky pigtails, which I reasoned were for LEDs or something, or extra 5V outputs, and a regular pigtail with standard colored wires.
Then, I thought to myself "How am I going to distribute the power?" - I needed a bus of some sort - a power bus, but how to make it. Well, ladies and gents - they make these things called bus strips - which are made of plastic, or in high power applications, ceramic - that have metal strips with screws on them to hook wires or metal strips to. So, Apache had a few of them, so I bought them, and also bought some yellow, red and black 12 gauge hookup wire.
At home, I mounted the bus strips (about four of them) to the bottom of my desk (a folding table), then I ran, from screw to screw on each of the bus strips, a yellow, a red, and a black wire. The yellow would be my 12VDC bus, red would be 5VDC, and black would be ground. Then, on one end of the bus I hooked up the power supply I had found (and before I hooked it up, checked that it worked, found the proper wires for 12VDC, 5VDC, and ground), screwed it to the bottom of the desk, and also hooked up an LED (to one of those smaller independant pigtails) to indicate power (which I then mounted into a hole I drilled into the metal strip that runs around the edge of the table).
Now, you may be screaming to yourself "But you don't have all the voltages coming out of that power supply!" - to which I say "Rubbish!"...
I have 12VDC, and 5VDC - and if I use the 5VDC as a "ground" (kinda like OC'ers do for fans), I also have a source of 7VDC!
Now, my toys that need 5 and 12VDC are taken care of. The scanner? It needed 15VDC - but I tried it with 12, and it works fine, your mileage may vary. For the KVM switcher that needed 9 volts, I tried using the 7 volt level, which almost worked, but not well enough, so I took the 12VDC line, dropped a variable resistor on in a voltage adjustment (not rheostat) config, measured with the DVM for the proper voltage (a little over 9VDC), then tried it - it worked fine. I let it run for a while, then felt it for heat - not too big a deal, ran cool. I could have also dropped the voltage to 9 volts over a few diodes as well, or if I wanted to be really cool - use a variable regulator circuit. But this particular device didn't need it.
That's it! No more wall warts, and I got back needed sockets for other things. It was cheap - total cost of parts was like $15.00, plus a little labor. Heck, use an old AT power supply, and you might have the rest in a junk box, and save a bit more money.
I know this won't help the guy who travels - but maybe he can build a mini version, using a smaller power supply (they make some quite small ones - check out www.allelectronics.com), some wire, and some custom connectors...
Re:I have...er, had...this problem with my desktop (Score:2, Interesting)
Uhh. Your voltage will vary with your load - it suits you to use a voltage regulator. Use an LM7809 and attach it to your 12Volt line and ground. You should be able to get these from jameco or even radio shack.
Re:I have...er, had...this problem with my desktop (Score:2)
Universals and AAs (Score:2)
Personally, I just lug all the appropriate adapters, since I tend to plug everything in at once. But I usually carry a spare "universal" adapter like this [radioshack.com] with an additional assortment of adapter plugs. I wish they made them with folding prongs. If I have something that uses a NiCD or NIMH pack, I use a rapid charger like this [mahaenergy.com].
I also try pretty hard to buy things that use AA cells so I can use rechargables. It annoys the crap out of me that my digital camera takes a non-rechargable non-AA. I never seem to have a spare when I need it.
Draw power from the USB port (Score:2, Interesting)
You can also get a similar cable that charges those Palms that run on rechargable batteries.