Hey guys and gals. I was hoping for a little help.
My brother uses a CPAP air machine when he sleeps. He likes to go camping and would like to setup a battery solution for the times he's away from home. Luckily the machine uses a laptop style power brick, so if I can put something together that'll run off a car battery that would work perfectly.
There is already an item that can be bought for exactly this but it's $85-$90 and we're trying to do it cheaper.
On the power brick it says it puts out 24v @ 3.75A. I did some poking around with my meter and determined it isn't outputting JUST 24v, there is also 21v & 3v.
I bought one of these 12v to 24v DC converters so it can be run off one car battery...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VRAQZVK?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00So I'm thinking if I put together a voltage divider like the one in the attachment that should give me the 24v, 21v, & 3v nicely. Then I started thinking about power handling. 24v @ 3.75A is 90watts! So those resistors would have to be MASSIVE. Then I thought that the CPAP machine itself would actually be the load pulling the current and dissipating all that power. Except the current still has to flow through those resistors to get to the CPAP machine. So maybe they will have to be huge? So will I need huge resistors, or is the CPAP going to be dissipating all that power and the resistors are just dividing up the voltage? I have a feeling this is going to be a very "DOH!" moment when I get an answer, maybe I'm thinking too much, or not enough.
It could also be that I might be barking up the wrong tree and maybe a voltage divider isn't even the best solution?
Sorry in advance if I'm just being really stupid on this.