Power Distribution

[PhilPassmore]

Had a few occasions when the supplied power connectors on various pieces of kit have proven to be very unreliable, so decided to try and do better;

 

These pictures are of my solution, which is very simple but good and robust. A plastic box, fitted with ten 3 pin locking sockets. Each socket is supplied with 12v on one pin, 5v on nother, and a commonground. This allows any five or 12 volt device to be wired into the matching plug, so it picks up the required voltage, regardless of the socket they are plugged into. I have also fitted two 'legacy' power connectors, and a couple of USB sockets too. 

 

The box can be supplied from mains power, and utilise the built in 12 volt power supply, together with fan cooling. Alternatively, it is wired to accept 12v into the box directly. I have been using a E-bike battery pack, fed through a 'buck' converter to drop the voltage. 

 

 

[adyj1]

2 hours ago, PhilPassmore said:

Each socket is supplied with 12v on one pin, 5v on nother, and a commonground. This allows any five or 12 volt device to be wired into the matching plug, so it picks up the required voltage, regardless of the socket they are plugged into.

I like this idea - very nice 🙂

[symmetal]

Nicely made. 🙂 I used to use XLRs on my original distribution but since mounting everything on the scope I had to use something smaller and ended up with 2.1mm DC jacks, but they're no where near as robust.

I assume you used pin 1 on the XLRs for your ground connection. 😉

Alan

[PhilPassmore]

That's correct Alan, and the plugs as you may have noticed have coloured collars, which denote whether they are 5 or 12v. I have also 'spiral wrapped' my various wires together to keep them organised. I have also bought a cheap length of 12v rubber heater strip from AliExpress, and have found that running it at 5v instead gives it a nice level of heat as a dew heater and self regulates without any control electronic components .