survient
12-21-2007, 12:27 AM
Ok, I'm trying something that I've been meaning to do for a long time. I'm building a laptop using a briefcase for housing and including everything I want in a laptop as much as possible. One major obstacle for me is powering this beast. Obviously it's going to have an AC adapter of sorts to power it overall. I found these power supplies http://www.powerstream.com/DC_PC.htm that may or may not be of good use to me for this, it depends on the charging system. I'm thinking of having a solar powered system(which would have a solar panel and batteries) being the main source of energy for the device, which would power the ATX power supply directly. This would allow me to easily plug an AC adapter into the solar power system to charge the batteries and power the laptop(at least I hope it will). The idea behind the solar power isn't to be the primary source of power for the device, but rather act as a way to prolong the battery life of the unit, and also charge it while not in use when I'm in a situation I can't plug it in. They sell bags like these http://www.voltaicsystems.com/index.shtml however they aren't powerful enough to charge laptops, and I think it would be more efficient to have the panel on the unit itself, rather than separately as part of the bag. The whole idea is for the unit to be fairly rugged, so that it's case is what carries it, and also would be able to carry other items as well. It's a mess-around project for me, to see how much I can shove into it before it no longer works(i.e. battery dies in a half hour). It's going to be on the heavier side, especially for a laptop, but I also plan on it having longer battery life and being more powerful than most laptops as well. What I'm looking for in this post for now is help on designing the power system for this beast, as I can't seem to match up a portable solar power system with the requirements on these DC ATX power supplies. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.