Solar Power Assisted Briefcase Laptop

[survient]

Hey everybody, new here, and just am trying to figure out what to do. I'm looking at my first real "mod", I've built a few systems, but nothing as complex as this. What I'm talking about here is a moderately sized briefcase that has been gutted to fit some form of ATX(mini, micro, or some deviant, maybe ITX) mobo, strewn with batteries for portable power and containing an LCD as a monitor. The biggest challenge for me here is I want to throw in something extra, a way to charge or at least prolong the battery life of the system. It's difficult when trying to figure out how to throw all of the pieces together as far as what goes first. Before this I was figuring I'd just use a solar power system(with a panel and batteries) to manage itself, and just have the system think it was running of AC power or whatever, this would make it easy to charge. However finding a system to support this has been difficult, if not, impossible. I've also considered the UPS approach, where the solar panel system will charge the UPS directly, and the AC power would charge both the UPS and power the system. Honestly I'm just not sure which direction to take this. I'd like the computer to show the battery life you have left, however an external meter would be fine as well. I've seen DC power supplies, but which solar panel system would work with this is beyond me. Any help would be appreciated.

[silverdemon]

I can't'help you on the solar panel things, but I do want to make a suggestion for a power supply. Go for a PicoPSU, this is a PSU that is about 3x times the size of a 20-pin molex connector. It'll need a low voltage (12-35 depending on model) which would be easilly achievable with solar panels. How to power the monitor, I don't know, but that's probably not a problem too...

link to site of PicoPSU: http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/it.A/id.417/.f

[survient]

I appreciate the info, I'll definitely look into it. My only issue with the PicoPSU is how I would incorporate batteries into the mix. My angle here isn't to power the machine off solar power but to provide a "trickle charge" for the batteries. The system will solely run off the batteries, as the solar power would be too unreliable to be a constant source of energy. My preferred angle would to have the OS(windows, linux, etc) to think it was running on a laptop or similar system, and recognize the batteries and show the charge. I've been looking for a laptop based mobo that wasn't mounted down, to be used as a base and be modified, but I haven't found one as of yet. Ultimately I want to have 3-4 batteries or 2 longer lasting ones inside the unit, the weight is actually one of my lower priorties, my goal is to make it slightly heavier than your typical laptop, but to make up for the weight with the power of the unit. Most of the time it will either be running off an AC supply or the batteries, the solar power is just an added bonus to make the battery last longer on a charge(as it would be trickle charging during the day. The tricky part is if I want to make the OS recognize and display the details about the batteries, while at the same time keeping the system from trying to run off the solar panels alone, which makes me think this will have to be an external power system that involved both solar panels, batteries, and a way to tap into an AC outlet. I'm just having a hard time in finding the hardware to do all of this, usually the solar panels come by themselves, making it hard to figure out what batteries and AC supply I would need with it.