Quote: Originally Posted by crazydemon
about restarting when the car is cranked? doensn't bother me at this point, may think of something later.
As for having only 12V input when the car is off, a simple relay by passing the 12V line regulator trigered by the ignition shoudl solve the problem.
I can use the live 12V line that is triggered by ignition to trigger a relay that would switch the input of the pc to the regulator, instead of simply feeding off the battery when the car is off.
Here's what seems like a simple solution to the reboot problem.
Connect a small 12V rechargable battery via a charge circuit to the main 12V line. Connect this devide in close proximity to your PC and install a diode that would only allow current to pass to the carPC system, but not from it. THis way, when you crank the car, the system will temprarily feed from the local 12V battery rather then the main power source. When all is good, this battery will quickly be recharged to normal conditions.
If the diode is not sufficient, a simple SCR or relay circuit may also be built.
Should work in theory, but using a 12v battery, your voltage will be variable to a point (maybe 1-2v) to the amount of current you draw, I'm under the impression that 'puters really only like stable voltages (and stable OS's
).
You could figure out a 2 stage switching powersupply, perhaps something similar to 2 parallel laptop 5a @ a settable 12-22v, or a single highpower one from targus, feeding the circuit you mentioned above. Run that whole thing off the 12v seperate battery, and just feed the charge current through a beefy diode or SCR like you mentioned. The laptop targus supply is very efficient (85%? higher?). It produces almost no heat.
This is exactly why I used a laptop as my car computer. In fact, this would be the closest thing to what you are proposing
My setup, I have a 5v dc tiny relay running off the keyboard port, which in turn switches on a 12v 30a relay which turns the power on to all the amps, the laptop converter, and the audigy usb nx sound card, which is powered by a regulated 5v powersupply I built last night (this supply can handle 2.5a, so today I will make it run a powered USB hub as well).
The circuit for the 5v side of the AVCLAN is based of the LM117 IC series, more specifically, the LM317T P+. It has a small aluminum box, which also serves as the heat sink for it. It has protection diodes, and capacitors to reduce ripple, and keep it clean when the car is running. It's basically the same circuit as page 14 - Adjustable Regulator with Improved Ripple Rejection
http://www.national.com/ds/LM/LM117.pdf
But some of the capacitor values are a little different, and the adjustable resistor is switched out to two 1.5k resistors in parallel to provide 750ohms to the vadj line. I really needed 735-740ohms to produce 5.10v, so I found two that were on the low side of their tolerance, make sure you test final voltage before plugging stuff in. The audigy nx has virtually no noise induced by this powersupply, and it does draw about 1.1amps.
When the laptop shuts down/hibernates/standsby (via tiny momentary switch in dash), it shuts power to all the things not in the laptop, including power to charge it's own battery (so to actually turn on, it should have some charge left at all times).