DC to DC converter for small electronics

jimh425 wrote:
I suppose you could use a voltage stabilizer/regulator. I don’t know if the voltage would be constant enough. My guess is that if you are going to have multiple network devices, you’d be better off with AC and a computer lab quality surge suppressor/power strip.

Alternatively, you could have a dedicated 12V circuit for it and use some type of trickle charger that can keep the voltage of the battery relatively constant.

I suspect it needs to be at least as stable as the 12volt leg on a PC power supply, as its doing its own step down internally to create a separate 5volt +/- circuit on the board in the NAS.

My plan is to run appropriate DC-DC units for the two main devices (NAS and Network Extender) as those will see more use in transit than the TV and Roku will, which will just get used on the inverter circuit.

FWC wrote:
This will do what you want:

Victron DC-DC Converter

Thank you, I was having a devil of a time remembering the brand and what these were called from the last time I saw them pop up in regards to flat screen TV discussions back in the past on the forum.

otrfun wrote:
This might work.

That's one of the one I found in my searches, but wasn't certain if that was a stable enough unit.

FWC wrote:
Depending on how stable the output needs to be, you may do better with a higher quality DC-DC converter. I use one of the no-name cast aluminum ones with my MPPT solar controller to use it as a DC-DC charger and the '24V' output on that is all over the place depending on load, luckily it doesn't matter in that application.

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I asked, I remembered there being discussions on this in the past here, but I couldn't remember the key words for the technology used, so wasn't turning up any results.

What I did find I was wary of because its no-name chinese made stuff and those rarely produce a PC power supply grade level of voltage.

Bedlam wrote:
DC to DC conversion typically uses pulse width modulation with a feed back loop to keep the voltage regulated at a set reference under varying loads. The power is pretty dirty until filtered through some capacitors. It used to be easy to pick up all these components and scale it to your needs, but stores and user knowledge have been dieing out.

Yeah, finding any kind of small components is getting troublesome. I couldn't even find the same single pole 12 volt illuminated switches I had bought less than ten years ago (I ended up cannibalizing the originals out of Mr. KIT because I couldn't find anything nowadays half as decent a quality).