Power for usb hub

**bklynkaos** · 01-22-2004, 10:08 PM

I am going to install my car pc this weekend and was wondering what the possibility of wiring my usb hub right into my cars power was. The hub is rated for 5.5 volts, obviously there would be a problem wiring this straight to the ignition on lead, has anyone employed a solution that would allow for me to power my usb hub via my cars power? I would take the 5volt power from the mobo power but the hub is planned to be in the front of the car where the pc is going to be installed in the trunk. Thanks for your help in advance guys.
Ideas

**MP3DUB** · 01-22-2004, 11:00 PM

You could figure out what kind of amperage the hub pulls and simply step down the voltage with a regulator or resistors or the like. I though about doing it that way when i added a hub, but I already had run a 120vac line to the front of the car for other things, so I simply added the psu for the hub to it.

**starfox** · 01-24-2004, 06:42 PM

Open the hub and look at the power regulation circuit.
If it takes in 5.5V it probably has some sort of linear regulator on it. You can probably feed 12V into it, but unless you find a way to heatsink it well it'll warm up very quickly and melt the case that it's in...

Also remember that if you look for a power supply that it'll have to supply 0.5A per port on the USB hub plus a little overhead for the hub's electronics.