Author Topic: Good 12V power supply to tether a robot?  (Read 813 times)

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Offline buck converterTopic starter

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Good 12V power supply to tether a robot?
« on: July 16, 2018, 02:05:03 am »
I am looking for a good power supply to tether power to my FTC team's robot. The battery has a 20A fuse, so i'll assume that's all the amps the robot will ever need. I'm only a high school student, and i was wondering if Inductive loads powered by a switching or a ATX PSU would cause anything to blow up. At most there would be 8 550 sized DC motors, and 6 Hobby servos, starting at the same time. Also the tether cord could be up 10 feet. What gauge do you recommend for that? It would be alright if the voltage drops a few volts, as it already does when powered by a battery. I was even thinking of adding a resistor to simulate the ESR of the battery we usually use. I'm on a budget here but protecting the robot's sensitive cell phone and controller is most important.

Here is the battery i'm trying to replace: http://www.revrobotics.com/rev-31-1302/
Here is the motors we use: http://www.revrobotics.com/rev-41-1301/ at most we would have 8 starting at the same time
Servos: http://www.revrobotics.com/rev-41-1097/
Here is a video of just the drivetrain of last year's robot for a sense of scale. 18"x18"
Just me and my scope.
 

Offline Pack34

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Re: Good 12V power supply to tether a robot?
« Reply #1 on: July 16, 2018, 02:36:42 am »
You could likely just use one of these:
https://www.amazon.com/eTopxizu-Universal-Regulated-Switching-Computer/dp/B00D7CWSCG/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1531708369&sr=8-4&keywords=12v+power+supply&dpID=41jyorZ9%252BQL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch


Another option would be to use a 12V lead acid and trickle charge it. That way you have the high current loop self contained on the robot and simply replenish your power source constantly.
 

Offline yngndrw

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Re: Good 12V power supply to tether a robot?
« Reply #2 on: July 16, 2018, 04:44:32 pm »
Here's a voltage drop calculator: https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/wire/voltage-drop-calculator.html

I'd probably pick 12AWG (5.3% drop) or 10AWG (3.3% drop) myself, although those cables will weight a bit so you need to consider the impact of that on your robot.
 


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