Thread: Battery PSU
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Unread 05-04-2009, 14:13
dpeterson3 dpeterson3 is offline
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Battery PSU

I want to run an old CPU mainboard off of a battery. I have been wanting to build an autonomous submarine for years. Last summer, I actually got a start on it, but never got to finish. I was going to use a Basic Stamp 2, but it just does not have a lot of the capabilities I want such as camera interface, processing power, or support for several sensors and still get some power out of it. I thought a CRIO would be perfect for what I want, but as you all know, they are very expensive. I looked around on Ebay for one, but could not find eny. However, I found quite a few old IO cards, relay cards, etc. cheap. I also have quite a few old mainboards lying around (people dump their old computers on me). I could easily turn one into a robot controller by using something like a Puppy linux distro on a flash drive. The problem I run into is power supply. I need to run the board off a battery. I have batteries that can handle the power draw, but I have no supply. I was thinking several voltage regulators would do it, but the ones I have (from Radioshack) only handle 1 Amp a piece. Can I put them in parallel to get more amps out of them or is there some better way to do this? Any ideas?