12V wall wart cluster

[Magic Static]

Over the years I have been acquiring new tech and a lot of it is powered with a 12v wall wart. I often am trying to find a place to plug in another 12v device. Two security DVRs and 12 cams all powered by 12v wall warts. The satellite receivers and USB drives and network drives, I have a lot of 12v stuff. So I often think about trying to consolidate my power sources. Well I have been shopping upgrades for my security systems and came across CCTV power distribution systems. Power supplies for 4,8,and 16 channel systems. And these will be perfect for powering all that other 12v stuff too.

16 Channel CCTV Camera Power Supply - 12VDC - 10Amps - Monoprice.com

 

[raoul5788]

Nice. Hopefully running the supply lines to it won't be awkward.

 

[Magic Static]

Nice. Hopefully running the supply lines to it won't be awkward.

Most of the 12v warts have the same size power plug as the CCTV gear. So I bought 16 power plug pigtails to fab up supply lines. MP sells the pigtails (male) for 25 cents ea.

 

[Cham]

Looks like the same power supply I use for powering the multi-switches, except the one I have is 24v (8 amp I believe). Some wall warts cause a lot of RF noise, so most of my 12v stuff runs off of larger 5-7 amp filtered/regulated linear power supplies. I find more equipment these days uses 5v though, likely so it's more adaptable to USB power from a computer. On that note many computer power supplies have both 5v and 12v outputs so you could use one for replacing a lot of wall warts if you have a good one kicking around. Never load switching supplies (like computer p/s) more than 50% of their rating or they get very noisy as well.

My ham station uses an Astron 12v 70amp supply, runs 4-6 trancievers simutaniously with a 90amp/hr battery as a backup. Wonder how many wall warts that would replace!

 

[KE4EST]

Yeah Astron was my first thought when I saw this thread. I have a 70A a 50a and a 25 I think it is 25 anyway.
But that would be overkill for this, however you can get more power for less.
DC 12V 3A to 60A Amp 110V 220V Power Supply LED Strip Light 12 V Volt 110 220 AC | eBay

 

[harshness]

Nice. Hopefully running the supply lines to it won't be awkward.

Certainly less awkward than trying to plug in half a dozen warts and having all the wires running independently.

I have two different laptop style power supplies (12VDC and 5VDC) so everything fits into my UPS battery side without a power strip. I had enough dead power supplies laying around that I just cut the pigtails off of them. I split the supply lines relatively near the loads so there's only a medusa for the last few inches. As long as I don't need to rearrange the stack it should stay pretty clean.

The self-resetting fuses in the Monoprice product are a nice touch. I used inline AGC fuse holders that aren't very tidy. A bus bar like the aforementioned product would clean that up nicely.

A multi-tap power supply would be nice for those devices that require different voltages (USB hub, Ethernet switch, SIP adapter)

One UPS keeps my cable modem, router, weather station, Vera and a radio that loses its brains on a power dump up for about 45 minutes.

 

[harshness]

Yeah Astron was my first thought when I saw this thread. I have a 70A a 50a and a 25 I think it is 25 anyway.
But that would be overkill for this, however you can get more power for less.

I bet you would pay considerably more than the price difference for the circuit breakers and barrier strips. The enclosure is a nice touch too.

 

[KE4EST]

I bet you would pay considerably more than the price difference for the circuit breakers and barrier strips. The enclosure is a nice touch too.

Fully aware of that. Why do you think he went with that one?
Just pointing out if you have everything else like he usually does.

 

[Magic Static]

Yeah Astron was my first thought when I saw this thread. I have a 70A a 50a and a 25 I think it is 25 anyway.
But that would be overkill for this, however you can get more power for less.
DC 12V 3A to 60A Amp 110V 220V Power Supply LED Strip Light 12 V Volt 110 220 AC | eBay

I was leaning toward those. I have a 24v 2a version that powers the PLL LNB array on one of my dishes. But the MP solution was seemed to be a more complete solution. Some of the reviews were not great. So I will have to check it out and report back. One thing I noticed was the 8 channel unit was 13 amp and the 16 channel one was 10 amp. Not sure what that is about, typo? But I did get the 8 channel one ordered.

 

[Magic Static]

I finally got the power supply set up.The 8ch unit is 13 amp. It divides the power into 8, 1.85a sources. This enabled me to replace 8 wall warts and power 17 devices. I did make a modification to it though. The box came with a AC lamp cord. The internal PS earth ground was a short wire to a post in the enclosure I replaced the lamp cord with a three wire cord and used the grounding post inside the box to ground the security DVRs.

 

[KE4EST]

Pictures?

 

[harshness]

If you see lines rolling through your video, you can disconnect that ground to break the ground loop that you created.

 

[Magic Static]

Pictures?

I didn't really put it in a highly visible place.

 

[Arion]

I have a modest .5KW solar setup into 4 deep cycle batteries for the ham radios and I use a 12v distribution center that I run the gear off of along with the 12 volt receivers, SiriusXM radio, powered speakers, LED lighting, security cameras, ect. Power outages don't bother me too much.