Hey all, i was looking for detailed information on efika power supply, but i could find none on the efika book... it just says to use PicoPSU, but I'm wondering whether Efika uses the +12V and -12 or not... it probably doesn't use it, so i would only need +5V -5V and +3.3 and this would make it much easier to make a full battery powered efika with a few bucks of passive components and a couple of 78xx 79xx stabilizers and a cheap battery...
any hints??

thank you ;-)

_________________
nullpointer _at_ cruxppc _dot_ org

You can look at the traces coming from the ATX connector to find that out.. A friend and I had a similar idea and traced out what portions of the ATX power supple were used.

Unfortunately, I don't remember off-hand if it used all, or just the 12v/5v rails. 12v+5v rails sounds right, but my memory is not very good. Trace it yourself :P

I just contacted my friend, he remembers it using the 12v and 5v rails, and seems to remember rthe Efika stepping the 5v down to 3.3v...

Best advice, trace the lines from the ATX jack and see what rails are used.

_________________
I <3 tiny computers.

It's here on the forums somewhere, but it's the same answer as with the power CONSUMPTION - it depends what you have connected.

+3.3, +5 and +12 are definitely all used.

-12V is routed to the PCI slot, because *SOME* PCI cards with TV tuners or other strange and wonderful hardware with odd electrical requirements want to use it. You *MAY* be able to get away with *NOT* using it.

If you are particularly bothered about it you could ask bplan, if the goal is to make a custom power supply or so, but then again there's an ATX connector for a reason. Why would you want to go about finding a special, custom power supply when you can use ANY suitable ATX supply?

_________________
Matt Sealey

hehehe good question...
reason one: because i have fun with electronics ;-)
reason two: i was thinking to some data sampling and recording applications for Efika and it would be really handy to have it battery powered... if i can power it with a 6V battery, why use a 12V battery? if most of the power (or all) is sucked from the 5 V, even if Efika has a very low power consumption, using a 12V battery the stabilizing/stepping circuit wuould dissipate more power than the board itself...
Anyway PicoPSU seems a pretty good solution, i will go for that... or anyone here can suggest me a better product?

byez

_________________
nullpointer _at_ cruxppc _dot_ org

The only comparable products to the PicoPSU were made by the same company - iTuner Networks. They discontinued all their old power supplies in favor of the PicoPSU.

It's the best on the market!

_________________
Matt Sealey

The PicoPSU will take a straight 12v input anyway, shouldn't be that hard to wire up a battery set for that anyway.

I've looked into similar setups for carPCs, that community deals with a lot of those same issues.

_________________
I <3 tiny computers.

_________________
... Tom

Tom, please send pictures or post them here...

R&B :)

_________________
http://bbrv.blogspot.com