A Cheap Powerbox for your Astro Imaging Rig скачать в хорошем качестве

A Cheap Powerbox for your Astro Imaging Rig

I wanted a cheap consolidated power unit that had a couple 12 v output lines, one dew control output that always operates at full voltage, and one higher amp 5v line--so that connected devices can draw up to 5 amps from this one. Perfect for the Raspberry Pi 4s. Okay, so here’s my homemade powerbox. What I have is a 12v input with up to 10 amp. Two boost converters that will maintain a steady 12 volts to my devices--so 12 volts in, 12 volts out. I run this box off a battery, so if the input voltage drops these two will hold the output at a steady 12volts leading to these two 5mm jacks here. The other boost converter goes to this RCA jack for dew control. I left this at 12volts output for one dew strip, which is fine. I almost always run my dew controller at full output, but we’ll see how that goes. I can always swap out the boost for a step-down, and run it at lower voltage. This one in the middle is a buck converter, stepping down voltage from 12 to 5volts. This is what I have here, connected to a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4 gigs of RAM. I wanted to make sure this can draw what it needed for power. I bought a 5mm jack to USB-C cable from Amazon, and that’s what’s running here. The 4’s get a bit hot, and this case has a fan and I added a heatsink to the board. The Raspberry PI 4 draws more power than its predecessors, but we get speed improvements and USB-3 ports. I don’t need the two 4K display ports, but that’s cool too. This is a very basic and cheap version of the astro powerboxes you see. I love my Pocket Powerbox from Pegasus Astro, but it doesn’t have 5 volt out. They opted for a very popular configuration with four 12v dc lines and one 8v line for powering DSLRs. So I understand why they designed it this way. And with Pegasus you get full ASCOM and INDI support for switching lines on and off, temperature and humidity sensor driven dew control. Powerful stuff. All I’ve done is take a few simple components, solder them together, and jam them in a box, but this serves the same purpose as any powerbox--stable voltage, cable management, and consolidated power for all my astro devices--camera, focuser, dew control.