Battery Charger from PC Power Supply

A Car battery can be charged using PC PSU. But connecting them should be handled properly. While there is no special requirement for car battery, I have tried with a small Motor Bike battery and it worked well. It should work for a car battery, However this needs to be validated. So try it at your own risk.

Safety Note

Please note that, this article explains the usage of PC PSU to experiment the possibilities of charging a battery. It does not mean that it should work and no guarantee that it will charge all the batteries. Yes I tried it is working but it may not work for you. It is bit of dangerous to play with the power so be extra much careful while dealing with power. If you are unsure don’t follow this.  This is for information purpose only, you may gain knowledge from these article. With this knowledge implementation should be taken care by yourself.

Read more here:   Convert PC Power Supply into a Car Battery Charger 

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Not only the initial setup needs a test PSU, but also we need that at desktop for some maintenance on the Car PC. Since the power requirements can go beyond 160 W. It is advisable to look for some good source of power supply. But as those who are working at the Car PC, Mostly will be having some spare old desktop PC PSU which can accept house hold AC to power up the PC. Then you may find this article is going to help you saving few dollars.

Ensure the SMPS has enough current to power your system. A typical 5 amp 12v system can be able to provide 12V X 5A=60 watts. But don’t run any power source at its full load as the electrical appliances at full load won’t run in efficiently and often a surge in power demand may kill the PSU or the PC.
So better try to take some PSU that way be ...

100 continuous watts of power Stanley PC1A09 100 Watt Inverter - Auto

Powering the car PC setup is very difficult step and has to be analyzed well before anything. If you have not planned how many devices you are going to be using and bought a very low power PSU. And later you have added a few USB devices and some HDD, then one day the PSU may not be able to handle the power demand. Eventually it will die, worse it may harm your Car PC as well. While choosing dimension of the PSU is also one criterion. I will leave freely to be chosen by those who setup.

Power Adapter: will be required for testing the PSU at home desktop where you setup and test your Car PC.
Battery: will be required for using in the car.
Cables: Choose power cables with proper gauge, otherwise it may lead to fire accidents.
Connectors: Mostly least bothered item in the Car PC setup. If th ...

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DC-DC Vs Special Car PC Power Supplies

Home computer (normally desktops) uses power supplies from AC (Alternating Current). A car battery provides 12 V DC, which can be utilized to power the Car PC by DC-DC power supply.

An inverter gives AC from the given DC power supply, so that normal low power consuming appliances can be used. However this method is very inefficient as inverter wastes lots of power while converting DC-AC-DC.

The real necessary requirement for Shutdown Controllers

The normal DC-DC converter will not trigger a shutdown pulse and wait rather it will cut the power supply when the Ignition is off. So the Car PC should be shutdown / hibernate / Standby before switching off the ignition. This is troublesome if you are forgetting one day to shutdown and switched off the ignition, chances are the next time when you triggering the ignition the Car PC might be ...

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Power Supply Units for Car Computers with Intelligent Shut down Controllers

Choosing the power supply unit is the most difficult tasks of assembling a Car PC. This has to ensure that the battery is not drained even the Computer is off. Even the computer is OFF, it will still consume about few watts from the Car Battery. It may lead to battery drain.

We need to find an Intelligent Shutdown Controller for controlling power switch of a motherboard by ignition. Basically these controllers will work well in mini-ITX motherboard with ATX power connector.

Always choose the right gauge/thickness for the cables, too thin cables will lead to severe damage. We took Positive and Negative from the battery directly. And also the ignition line from the Car’s circuit. This ignition line is a main factor fo ...