Hi guys. I have a sort of diy laptop project in mind. I would like to run a Via pico board and a small display on a rechargeable battery. I want to know if it's possible at all? The board is 12v 5A and does 60w on full load Quizz
Yes, it is most certainly possible. You need to employ some kind of circuitry to keep your voltage constant, otherwise you motherboard will fry slowly on a full battery and will first start to throw strange errors before failing when you got still a thirth of you battery left. For calculations, the mean wattage of your board is much more important as the fully loaded one, as in real world, you rarely stress your computer fully for the entire time. And don't forget the screen, as in things like mobile phones and laptops, those are big power-suckers too. For exact calculations, you'll have to ask someone who did such things more recently than I On the other hand, if you didn't buy the board already, 60w is a lot of power for something mobile. Try to look around for something more frugal?
Thanks alpaca! I already have the board, so there´s no use in finding something more frugal. But just to know that it´s possible is great. I´m going to look for a good but frugal 8-9" LCD now, and then ask around for calculations I guess. / Quizz
You can use 12 V battery for RC cars and combine it with 60W picoPSU. picoPSu will do the job of distributing power to board,HDD and lcd.
The via EPIA p910 boards doesn´t come with 24pin ATX connection, its comes with internal supply and SATA power connection. So I don´t need the picoPSU I guess. But would a 12v RC battery really work for this?
Sorry, I looked at this board now. It requires 12 V DC which menas that there is large possibility that it can be run with battery only,without any additional electronic. Bu I recomment you to contact VIA and ask them-I know that some of their boards can be run with battery pack.
you ideally need a dc-dc converter that converts the output to 12v no matter what the input is, something like this I just found some interesting stuff, look here at pico ups
So I should use something like this between the VIA board and the battery? I´m also curious about what battery to use. I´ve found a 8" 12v 3w LCD that could work for this project. What type of battery should I look for here? Pranja talked about RC battery, is that possible? The VIA board power consumption at average is between 16-30W. So, that´s 12v 5A 16-30W
Well that´s nice! That one does 8000mAh. There´s a smaller version that does 3000mAh. Thats not enough I guess? I have some tight margins to think about And would I need some kind of dc-dc converter aswell, like the one RichCreedy linked to?
I´m still curious if I´d need that DC-DC converter? I´m also curios if you need to fully discharge the battery before recharging with these kind of batteries? Some specs of the battery: This super capacity battery box preforms little resistance,super storing capacity,multi-recycable times and non-memory With its multi-protective device, the inner circuit prevents the box from over-recharging or over-discharging Under the monitor of our computer,the quality can be assured This Rechargeable battery is a 12V 8000mah Li-ion Battery and it is specially designed for powering the system device which use 12V DC power. Note: Do use the specialized accesory to recharge The input volatage of any appliance must be in the range of the output of the battery ,otherwise it can do harm to the applince To avoid the decending capacity,the battery must not be put away over 1 year Power adaptor specification: Input: 110-240VAC 50/60Hz Output: 12.6V DC, 350mA
8000 mAh will give you 8+ h working on battery with setup like that. With 3000 mAh you could expect 3-4 h max. I still think that you don't need that dc-dc converter. This text "With its multi-protective device, the inner circuit prevents the box from over-recharging or over-discharging" -I understand that battery allready have that circuit that is in the dc-dc conventer. But I advise that you contact both VIA and battery seller/maker to be 100 % sure. You need to discharge it before charging-it's like any other Li-ion battery in mobile phone,laptop etc.
Have you checked with VIA, the board might have voltage regulation circuitry on-board which case you don't need the dc converter. If it doesn't you'll ideally want a step-down converter to convert from the >12v to exactly 12v. If you can't find one you might get away with a linear regulator it does the same thing but converts some of the power to heat to bring the voltage to exactly 12v but its not so efficient but it is very simple to construct.
Thank you again Pranja!! I wasn´t expecting 8+ hrs of gaming, that sounds great. I´m going to contact VIA. Hmm. Gonna contact VIA first and see what they say. Thanks Steveo!
You need to read the spec of the mono and find out the tolerance of the 12V input. If its tight eg 11.5-12.5V then you will need a regulator as the battery will move more than this. This also means you will need a higher voltage battery accommodate for the losses in the regulator. I'm sure you can probably get a SMPS that will increase your battery voltage from whatever it is at the time to say 16V then drop it down again. But I don't know whether those exist.
All Li-Ion battery packs require internal regulation circuitry for safety and (often) for battery balancing.
Discharge it like in fully discharge? From what I´ve been reading it says the opposite. Like here for example. Don´t know if that source is any good, but... I´ve read the specs, but no info about the tolerence. Still waiting on VIA to answer my mail =( Seems like I don´t need that regulation dc-dc converter than, or?
You should defintely regulate the voltage coming off a battery, never discharge a lithium battery fully it will destroy it, having had a fair amount of experience with batteries from remote control cars you will want to do some battery research as you'll need some extra things like auto cutoff to stop from damaging the cells beyond repair. Have you thought of making the battery removable so you can have a spare or two? Also having the option to connect a mains supply when you are stationary with access to a plug socket would be a useful feature i would have thought. The charging/power circuit could be fairly complex so you'll need access to someone with decent electronics knowledge. Just food for thought! Maybe there's an off the shelf circuit that can do all this for you?
