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You could also use a desktop with one of these ATX power supplies that runs on 12VDC instead of 120/240VAC: https://www.cartft.com/catalog/il/2302
Wow, I was not expecting that price! Is this just a rare item or is there something particularity expensive inside it?
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Don't DC-DC transformers use AC internally?
If you want electrical isolation between the input and the output, they use AC in the middle to achieve that, but if you don't want isolation, you could use a boost DC converter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boost_converter
But really, I'm glad that they're actually doing it instead of talking about doing it and spending all of their time musing about _what if_ they did this other thing instead. This looks great.
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I was recently traveling with a M1 MacBook, and had a 20W solar panel + a 24Ah power bank for charging. Worked like a treat for coding.
Can you elaborate a little more on your setup? That sounds interesting.
I need to investigate if USB-C car charger adapters can charge a MacBook. When traveling with a car and the sun doesn't shine, it would be a nice backup solution. I was basically living in a car + tent for four weeks, traveling and working.
Rather than inverting 12V DC to 240V AC and back, you could skip a step and use a laptop car charger, converting 12V DC straight to ~20V DC.
I did this for a year on my previous macbook and it destroyed the battery. The inverter creates cleaner power. Good luck finding a quality one that can handle the voltage changes from 14.6 -> ~10.5 the battery is going to spit out with the MPPT attached..
> 12v to 240v inverter Can someone explain this part of his equation? What’s he doing with 240v? Or maybe he meant 24v for charging the laptop?
> 12v to 240v inverter Can someone explain this part of his equation? What’s he doing with 240v? Or maybe he meant 24v for charging the laptop?
The armchairs here are all great. If they used a raspberry pi and rewrote their javascript in ARM assembly and reinvented a more power-efficient compression algorithm and solved your favourite problem of serving static pages instead of the problem they actually want to solve, they could maybe get more instructions per watt. But really, I'm glad that they're actually doing it instead of talking about doing it and spen…
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Can you elaborate a little more on your setup? That sounds interesting.
Basically this: https://voltaicsystems.com/arc20w-kit/ . It's a bit on the expensive side, I'm sure you can find cheaper kits. I like that the battery has a USB-C port, so I can charge the MacBook directly. To be truly off-grid, you need something bigger though. 20W is ok for basic work, but if you're compiling or doing other heavy work you need more power. If it's a bit cloudy then the battery won't fully charge wit…
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-usb-car-char...
Of note, I persuaded Atlassian to remove the (rather nice) animated clouds from their "you have been logged out" web page because it pulled 30 watts (even when web page was hidden). Running on solar/battery exclusively, that was a problem; kudos to them for acting on it.