Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Project: 12V Power in the Office

A tiny little project from July, 2007 - one of those small improvements that make life onboard  more convenient.


We have several hand-held devices that can use 12V power to recharge their batteries:
  • Our cell phones
  • The remote speaker/mic for the VHF.  By the way, this is a wonderful invention.  It allows me to have the "VHF" with me wherever I go on board, even tho the VHF is mounted inside at the top of the companionway.  It beats a hand-held VHF, in that it uses the real thing, with it's full 25 watt power and antenna mounted on top of the mast.  But most importantly, it allows me to turn down the volume on the main set so that it doesn't irritate Jane, and keep the mic beside me at the helm, thereby promoting bliss under way.
The most obvious place for setting up access to 12V for these devices would be in either the nav station, or the office.  I chose the office, because nearby shelving was suitably equipped with fiddles to keep things in place under way.  And because the nav station always seems to be crowded with other stuff.

First, where to get the power?  I chose to tap into the port side lighting circuit, mainly because that is the only 12V wiring in the office.  So, step one was to remove the paneling covering the hull liner (Eolian has a hull liner) and thereby expose the wiring.

Next (after opening the breaker to stop the sparks), I cut the lighting wire at the junction where the power for the overhead light was taken off.

I drilled a suitable-sized hole in the paneling down by the shelving, next to the existing 120V outlet.

Voila! After adding a new lead to the new outlet, splicing up the wire and replacing the paneling, the outlet is in place.

And we now have a charging station!
Share/Bookmark

5 comments:

Mike said...

Good job. I love seeing project posts like this.

Mike

Team Giddyup said...

We have a 12V outlet and I want to get a 12V to 12V box to regulate power for our laptop so we can go directly from the batteries to it and bypass the inverter.

- Livia

Robert Salnick said...

Mike:

OK, I'll dig around form some more small 'comfort level' projects

bob

Robert Salnick said...

Livia -

Yes, that would be nice (I am assuming that your computer's wallbrick puts out regulated 12V).

Our laptop most times gets enough charge from the time every morning when I run the inverter to make Jane's latte (well, mine too)

bob

Mike said...

Thanks Bob.

Livia: I haven't purchased from these guys but I did bookmark it after reading good comments about their computer adapters. Perhaps you could check them out if you haven't already.

http://www.lindelectronics.com/

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...