DIY: Using a PC power supply with your lipo charger
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- Most RC battery chargers require a source of 12 volts to power them and in this DIY video, I show you how to convert an old PC power-supply to a source of 12V that will do the job perfectly.
If you have any questions, just ask them in the comments section below or in the forums at: www.rcmodelrevi...
Hi Bruce - thanks for your advice , pulled out an old computer sitting under the bed , ripped out the power supply & now were flying tomorrow (weather permitting) - the grey wire was 1st in from the left on the Dell PS - 5141 3A 145W power supply - none the less were flat out charging batteries tonight - TOTALLY Stoked Thanks Heaps :)
Most of them will have the 5v sense on a green wire. When the fan in back is off, it "should" be the only wire with power on it, but there may be another 5v in the motherboard connector that is live for PCI and USB power while the machine is off.
While each wire may be capable of carrying 7-22 amps (wire gauge), most PC power supplies will only recommend a load of 75 watts at 12v each.
Done this for years to bench test car audio equipment. No issues yet.
Great job.
After 6 years tthis video is even more relevant! 12V is what you need to run most of LED lightnings, which are ultra cheap nowadays, only expensive part - powersupply :)
I often thought about doing this with a old computer power supply I have. This is a really smart idea.
@RCModelReviews You'd be surprised what people have in their lofts! The first time i went to do this, i found an old PC in my loft, opened her up and couldn't find the power return check wires, sure enough it was an AT and i jsut threw in the pile of things to take to the dump. PS, it's nice to get a reply from the man himself! I love watching your shows, you're one of the few subscriptions i can rely on having an enjoyable video every time your name appears! Kudos to you my freind ;)
Hi Bruce,
I know this relates to an old review, but it's still highly relevant and very useful.
Last week, I bought a Chinese copy of an Imax B6 LiPo charger. These things have received mixed reviews on the internet, but it was only £11 brand new including postage and from a UK seller, so I took a chance. If it lasts a year, I figure I would have had my money's worth. As an aside, the main criticism seems to be the voltage they charge the LiPos to, which under certain circumstances can be dangerous if it's too high, but I also learned from the internet that they can be recalibrated to the correct voltage which gave me a little more confidence.
Using the B6 charger to charge smaller capacity LiPos either via a 12 volt battery or my mains adaptor isn't a problem, but when I tried to charge a high-capacity LiPo at a figure above 2 amps with my mains adaptor, I kept getting an 'Input Voltage Error' message, so I looked on the internet to see if others had the same problem. It then became apparent that my mains adaptor wasn't able to deliver the necessary amps, so I revisited your own solution, and I'm glad I did.
I had an old computer power unit kicking around so thought I'd investigate it. The wiring proved to be exactly as you described so took little work to modify it.
You correctly point out in your video that the power on 12 volts through the yellow wires can be up to 15 amps so it is best to run two wires in parallel to distribute the load. I did things slight differently. I took the lid off the unit, de-soldered the yellow wires, and soldered a length of red 14 awg silicone in their place and ran it out through the front of the unit. I did a similar thing with the black wires.
At the other end, I attached a female Deans connector, and tidied everything up with heat shrink tubing.
The B6 charger itself came with a variety of leads, one of which was for the input side. It comprised a jack plug on one end, and two crocodile clips on the other for attaching to the 12 volt supply battery terminals. I cut that in half, and soldered male and female Deans connectors at the severed ends (female from the supply side). That allows me to use either the crocodile clips for when I'm at the field and wish to use a lead acid battery to power the charger, or a Deans for when I charge from the mains via the computer power unit.
And with 15 amps at its disposal, the unit works a treat and no more of those annoying 'Input Voltage Error' messages!
Many thanks.
Tad Davison
Cambridge UK
Tad Davison sounds like a good job, I can picture it perfectly and would work a charm. I will wind maybe 5 yellow and 5 black together.
Thanks for this post.
i just realized today that my old car-battery charger goes over the max voltage for the lipo charger when i connect the lipo charger, and had to start looking for other options. This looks like the perfect solution, as it allows me to keep an eye on things when charging batteries, and to keep it indoors, in stead of having to do a connect the charger to the car battery and keep running outside.
I would really recommend that you do one of two things: You solder those wires that you've cut (the turn on wire to ground) or even easier B: you just take a 1cm wire, and plop that in the 20 pin(or 24 pin) from the green (or gray). It's just a lot cleaner.
Thanks for posting this. I'm a pack rat when it comes to PC parts so I just used one of my old power supplies. This worked like a charm.
nice quick vid bruce.. im late to the party, but a simple way to ground the signal wire is to stuff it into the wire next door to its original spot in the atx plug (ie: 5th from the left).
cheers!
Lot of people have a laptop computer who's dead at home... Or other devices who works with 12Volts.
My point is: If the power supply can out more than 3Amps, then, you can use it !
Of course, don't expect to use it to charge more thant 3Amps/hour ;-)
Oh, and s'cuse my English by the way.
You can just connect the green wire to the black one next to it, and i actually recommend that you do this. I'd also say, that instead of cutting the wire, just take a small piece of wire, and put it in the connecter from the green wire, to the black one next to it. No need to cut it. And yes, you can definitely touch it. as a rule of thumb, it starts to get a bit dangerous at 30 volts. so yeah you are safe :)
I'm using an old Compaq power supply. It does not have the standard wiring. However, all I needed for it to start was to put on a load, so no wire cutting. Took a while to figure out, simpler than I first thought.
Hey Bruce, I did this just recently following the wikihow site. (First link when you google "pc power supply lab convert")
Works great. It involves opening the box. So folks should best understand the risks first and know what they are doing.
Yes that should work fine. Just ensure you have enough wires connected to the output post depending on how many amps your pulling.
Many times, they quote multiple rails but it turns out there is actually only one rail. Its only really possible to tell that with the power supply open, but either way you should be good to go! Also, remember to have a matching amount of wiring for your ground too!
Extremely nice video. Just wish you had the cleaned up version at the end to get ideas on how to do that.
you can run as many chargers as you want. The wattage itself doesn't determin it, however the wattage of the 12v rail is the one that matters. Check how many amps the 12v rail can pull. As long as you don't exceed that you should be fine :) (and if you do, the psu should just shut off)
say you have a psu that can give 20A on the 12v rail. thats 20 chargers using 1A 200 chargers using 0.1 amp, or 2 chargers pulling 10 amps :)
If you don't want to cut your wires on the Power Supply, what you can do is get a small piece of wire (preferably one with casing, like a regular cable, about 2 cm long) strip both ends of the wire, (if you have a regular cable), plug one end into the green/grey plug, located 4th from the left, and plug the other end into the Black wire plug (5th from the left).
This is the exact same as cutting the wire and connecting it to another black wire, except you dont have to cut anything!
I have modified quite a few in the past and most need a load on the 5v line to turn on and maintain 12v. Best I have found is to use a large 50w 4.7R metal cased resistor, but they do work well.
I am also using two 400w PSU wired in parallel (another mod needed for that) to double the current to drive the stepper motors on my Home made CNC machine
Just starting with the whole rc thing and your vids are immensely helpful. This one has just saved me twenty quid. Good man.
Never realised it was so easy Bruce so thanks for that mate but i got rid of our old PC about 5 months ago ;-( but i bet one of my family will have one knocking about ;-) thumbs up mate.
Come to think of it, if the PSU is in one of those old steel cases, the whole case could be used for battery charging. Not only will it have a fan to help regulate temperature, but it could be a great container incase of battery catastrophic failure. Any fire or explosion would be contained.
Thanks Bruce. Great timing - I'm just about to do this myself.
Well hells bells you just saved me £50 on a power pack, thank you very much,
just been up attic got the old pc down a bit of surgery and batteries are now on charge.
Thank you very much for the DIY help, I have quite a few of these power supplies laying around. They will all be put to work once again.
I like the newer trailer - well done Bruce. (glad you edited out my interruption lol)
Just got mine working. Thanks for this great vídeo :)
I was having "connection break" issues with my Turnigy Accucel-6 50W 6A Balancer when connecting from other power supplies, and it worked great with this Solutions.
THANKS
I actually did this a couple of months ago. I use an atx psu for my 3d printer. Just took a yellow and black wire and soldered it to a xt60 plug :)
I cut all the wires off just inside the power supply case and bundled the different colours together and put heat shrink on them. On the 12V I put an XT 60 tail which plugs straight into the charger input and stuck the charger to the power supply with double-sided tape.
That's a way more simpler way of doin' that to an ATX PSU than what RC Heli Magazine's method was. Mind you, they added a few extra bells and whistles like status LEDs or Volt Meters & made use of the safety overload features etc.
good stuff Bruce, your video and another one gave me some great ideas, I like how you explained the joining on the two wires so I knew what it did and why. mine was green :)
You are the NZ version of MacGyver Bruce :-)
Great video certainly helped me out and saved a few dollars
@RCModelReviews Hey Bruce, what do you mean by "tested them"? I've got a converted power supply too, with one of the resistors everyone recommends but all my chargers still say they're only getting about 11.6 volts. Not that it affects charging though. Just curious what you did to test.
Hi, You forgot to mention that a lot of pc power supply, need a load on the 5 volt line to power up and work correctly.
You might have to put a resistor on the 5v circuit because sometimes the psu won't put out the full voltage unless it has a load
@TheMagicmole77 just be sure to short the green wire to ground without the psu being connected to the mains before u start messing with it :) it has nothing to do with plugin capacitors backwards:)
Brilliant explanation. Simple and crystal clear. Thank you.
You, sir, are brilliant! Thank you for this video, I have so many of those lying around.
haha!! i love your old 1980s video at the end. Great Stuff.
This is great stuff... On your followup video, will you talk about removing all the excess wiring, so there's just a nice tidy 12v and ground coming out?
Hey Bruce one of those supplies was an ATx and would have supplied that dual core board I gave you
with mine I took the case apart, removed all the wires then mounted some terminals on the metal case, paralleled up some of the wires and attached them. Mine the switch on the front of the computer was built into the power supply by a long mains wire which I shortened and mounted inside the case so i didn't have so many wires leaving the case to make it tidier
Alright mine arrived in the post this morning followed your instructions and charging lipos a lot quicker than my old power 12v. 1.5a charger got so carried away I even built a wooden box to house it in out of some off cuts of 3mm ply .. cheers for the blog
AT power supplies are just fine. Not a problem. Voltage does sag with load, it is to be expected, and a voltage sag of 0.24 volts really isn't a lot.
I had a poke around in an old at supply I had (it's dead now :/ don't let a scredriver on your table fall into it :( ) I assume you didn't have any wire that you needed to connect for the psu to start up, but it just had a switch on it right?
Hey, Bruce! Your charger is set to charge LiFe's there! What's a LiFe anyway? Maybe I should get a LiFe and see what it's like!
@jof1953
Further to my last post I took a chance and simply wired the green wire to ground and it worked: I now have 12V at the yellow wires and and ps fan works. So Bruce, don't bother with any research on my behalf because the problem is fixed and thank you for your interest!
@monboy10 Cut them off and use heat-shrink tube to make sure it's safe. Be aware to put heat-shrink tube on every wire and not all of them at the same time as this will probably short-circuit your Power Supply.
@TheMagicmole77 It not radioactive:P, it says dangerous because before the regulation its actually 240/120v which well its dangerous if u touch it. As long as the psu is not connected to the mains and the capacitors in it are discharged u have nothing to worry about :)
@RCModelReviews
I downloaded a schematic diagram for the 400W ps and it shows an arrow into control board via the green wire as PS ON and an arrow out of the control board via the grey wire as PWR ON. I trust this helps.
Awesome! That took all of 3 minutes... Thanks! Guess I'll need a more powerful power supply though... The whole rig shuts down as soon as the charger tries to supply more than 9.1A...
Another great tip thanks Bruce love watching your vids, also like to come fly at your club sometime, great having that sealed runway.
@RCModelReviews check out the video at 3:48, under black it says "gray: power supply on"
i have made simmilar thing with PSu thing with same charger as in video .. Have made the jumper connector to short those wires on 24 pin main connector, only cut 4pin cpu jack to connect with accucel 6 and works fine
@stephen5150 Hi there, the AT power supplies do not have the soft button return therefore it is not advisable to use them. Try to find an ATX supply.
This also works with chargers with built-in PSU's?
And does this make the charger stronger, Sir?
The Gray/Green wire connected to the ground Black wire - is this connection of the Black wire going back to the PSU or to its connector? Hope you understand my question.
uhm, because the wallwart has a maximum of 1000 milliamps, that is 1 amp. If you try yo pull anything more than that, the voltage drops a lot. So yeah, you answered your own question :P
I miss the old outro Bruce. It really showed off the channel a bit.
Thanks Bruce this is a great guide!
Would it be possbile to run more than one charger off one of these power supplies if they are a larger 500+ watt unit?
Thanks.
great
Im gonna use this for my motor bike as a charger!
Thanks a lot! But all this procedure just to power a charger from the wall outlet? How come cheap RTF aircrafts come with cheap chargers and adaptors? Can those adapters be used on this Turnigy charger?
Ok, no problem with joining any wires together, but who draws 10A? My charger draws 6A max. Wouldn't one yellow and one black be enough then? You could also shorten it to reduce resistance.
Can i buy a computer power supply (1050w) just for my 800w charger while HK doesnt restock in EU or UK or is best for me to wait? the price is the same beeing the HK power supply (Turnigy 1050w) or the Corsair Power supply
Great guide! Would it be possible to make a diy foam cutter using one of these. Most of the 5 Amp adjustable power supplys in sweden are at least 250 dollars.. Thanks a lot.
Awesome! Just what I needed! Who said Kiwis couldn't fly! 😲😎
What do you mean you can't fit everything in the PSU case? : ) I meant an old steel computer case. Plenty of room on there, cooling from the PSU fan (and maybe others if wanted).
hi just to let you know it is not ALWAYS the 4 wier and it's the green wither
would it be possible to use the 5v wires as input power for a cheaper servo tester so I don't have to hook up a speed controller/bec and battery to power it without frying servos.
Maybe you can help. I pulled the power supply out of my old HP tower. It works fine IN the tower so I know it's a good unit. I've read everything and watched everything I can and still can't get it to power up OUT of the tower. Dummy load on the 5v rail, 12 v rail, black to green per industry standards. NOTHING. What am I doing wrong? This has a single row mother board plug, not the double row like your video. About ten across or there abouts.
Thanx
Hi Bruce,
Very interesting video.
Unfortunately i have a computer power supply (400Watt, "Enhance" brand. model no. ATX 1140F, "with fan sensor control") which has the cabling cut off 10cm from where it exits the case i.e. there are no plugs to refer to in order to locate the correct grey or green switch wire.
There is one grey wire AND one green wire as well as multiple blacks, oranges yellows and one blue. Also there is no colour-code identification label.
Can you help please?
Hi Bruce, do you know where I can download "no-smoke.exe" from... the computer shop said I might be able to fix my power supply if I could find where to download the right file from...
thank you for this old but great video!
Hi there apparently your supposed to connect a load from one of the red wires to earth, like a 10 ohm wire wound 10 watt resistor or some wont work...Fred ik.
how many amps does the avarage charger pull or does that depend on how many amps your pushing into the battery?
How can i use the power supply in mp pc without taking it out. I still want to run my pc with it but have a jack at the back of my pc i can plug my charger in. Is it possible? I guess it would only work when the pc is running.
Youve connected the black wire not correct. Have to connected to the PSU side, not the connector side of the cutted cable. Same with the other wires.
How would one get the voltage up to around 15 volts to charge LiFePo4 batteries?.. 4S I think. I have a ham radio PS and it just is a little short of the needed voltage.
Thanks for the great video. bob
Thanks for all your videos. I'm not electrician and I am new to the RC Model field so all of this is very helpful including all your LiPo videos. But why don't these battery chargers just come with a power supply? And while I apprecieate the idea of using old computer powersupplies, I don't really want a bunch of wires just hanging around not being used.
Thanks
You should check out Progressive RC. They have charger and power supply combos, a few of which, are quite reasonable in price. I got the "The Ticket" combo which comes with an ICharger 206B and a 300W power supply for $185, as well as your choice of battery connector cables, lipo guard, and optional modular board for parallel charging. It's not what I would call a cheep set up, but everything is quality built, is as plug and play as you can get, and is easy to set up and use.
Airwolf classic example of being scared of the unknown....it's not going to hurt anything...open your computer...you'll see a ton that are just hanging in there not connected to anything and your fine with that...cuz you don't See it and you don't understand it
thank you very much, you just saved me a lot of money, an very easy. ron miller
Thanks Bruce , very usefull and easily followed
actualy those ATX power suplyes need some load to work correctly, add an 10-100ohm resistor betven 5V line and GND and voltage will be 12V
Thanks Bruce. I love this stuff. Picked up two power supplies from recently-dumped new-looking Dell PCs at our local tip. Five minutes of soldering and they work! Do I need to take precautions about over-charging lipo batteries? No alarms to say battery full.
I hope you're joking. If not, then I would like to advise you not to charge your lipo directly from this. This is a tutorial on how to make a 12v power supplu for your lipo charger. If you directly charge a lipo from this supply alone, then you have a great risk of having a lipo fire.
Hi Bruce, thanks again for a great informative video.. Just a quick question, do I have to use a resistor on a 5v line? Getting conflicting information on the forums.. Will it be ok without one?
thanks boss for this video.i was able to save some cash for my power supply...
Can i use the power supply of my working PC to power my charger while my PC in ON ? or i will damage my pc ?
Thanks Bruce Great job mate
I've just got the Accucell 6 80w charger that comes with a XT60 connector for the power supply. Just want to check I can do this and solder the 12v and neg to an XT60 and that'll do the job?
This sounds like short circuit protection kicking in. It seems that what ever you plug it in to draws more current than your PSU can supply :/ Check the label and see how many amps it can pull on the 12 volt rail
Hi Thanks for your advice recoverting a computer power supply to a bench supply.
I'm wondering why U didnt make the final connection to the charger more fail safe. by doing a m/f connecto directly to the computer femail plug?OR is that an obvious thing for most of us to do?
Thanxs
Jim
wont it shutdwown after 4-5 seconds? same as if you are holding the powerbutton on your pc
I want to build a field charging station for my 3s1p 2250 mah batteries for R/C flying. Can I use a high mah 3s1p (say 20,000mah) to power my lipo charger? So the train would be a large mah 3s1p lipo battery to power the lipo charger that would charge my 2250 3s1p batteries. Thanks, Lewis
I just discovered that the power supply I got has another wire(brown) that needs to be connected to a 3.3V wire(Orange) it was connected like that at first but I cut the wires to save space. It's not a problem if you leave the wires as they are.
I've a Turnigy Mega 200W x 2 Charger. HK recommends to use min 500W power supply. Can I use 300W computer power supply, if so what is the max Amps I can use to charge two 3S batteries at the same time. Thanks a lot for all your videos, love them, very informative. Keep it going.
not in AC, and not in DC. It doesn't matter. (what you might be thinking off here, is that 12v ac rms is 17 volts peak to peak)
Hello Bruce. I'm in progress to make this conversion. The thing is that I have a Fortron Blue Storm II which has 2x 12 volts outputs with 18 Amps Each. I want to buy a Cell Pro 10 XP and I want to know if Is ok to parallel the two 12 wolts outputs to have a better Amps. Also what charger would you recomand that charges quickly and individually the cells. Please excuse my bad english.
Is it possible to run multiple Accucell Chargers on one PC power supply? I
Do you know of any 12v 60amp computer power supplies or server supplies that can be easily converted to power my60 amp required Hitec X2 400 charger? I have a old IBM Artesyn 12v69amp server power supply but do not know procedures on converting for lipo use. Thanks
Hello everyone, i just did this with one of my power supplies and it powers up ok and then when i go to plug on my Triton 2 to the yellow and black leads it basically kills the power supply, shuts it off, and then i hear like a buzzing sound coming from the mother board within the power supply, am i doing something wrong? PLEASE HELP!!!!
How can you get the fan to come on?
thank you bruce :) hobbyking needs to send you more gear to test!!!!