| Electronics > Beginners |
| Splitting 12V DC Power Output |
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| mbelanger:
In my home all my CAT 6 wiring terminates in one of those Leviton in wall enclosures, so space is at a premium. My modem, firewall and switch all are 12V, but unfortunately have wall-wart transformers, but the enclosure only has a 2 AC outlets with no room for an extension cord. Given that all three devices have 12V 1A draw, is it safe to assume that I can split a quality 12V 4-5A power supply output into three DC barrel plugs? I'm so happy to have found this forum and greatly appreciate that there is a section for newbs. Thanks, -MB |
| David Hess:
That will work as long as all of the devices do not share a common as will be the case with ethernet connected devices. |
| ebastler:
--- Quote from: David Hess on April 09, 2019, 04:26:32 am ---That will work as long as all of the devices do not share a common... --- End quote --- Am I misunderstanding something, or was this just a typo? Thanks for confiming or elaborating! |
| Bratster:
It should work just fine unless one of the devices is doing something stupid with the power supply input. You can use an ohm meter to check between the negative on the barrel jack and the case of the device to see if they are connected together as ground. In in which case everything's good. Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk |
| mariush:
You'll be fine. Pretty much everything in those three devices runs at maximum 5v ... most likely 3.3v-3.6v for the main networking IC and 2.5v or less for Flash memory / RAM / configuration eeproms if any. They'll all have some switching regulator inside to convert 12v to a lower voltage like 3.6v or 5v and then use LDOs (linear regulators) for smaller voltages. The 12v is chosen because it's a common voltage that makes the wallwart adapters bundled with devices cheap, mass produced, easy to source. Being switching regulators, the devices will probably work with as little as 7.5v on the input but I can't say this with absolute certainty and with higher voltage you get less current (ex modem may have a 12v 1A adapter but only consume 0.7A max ... so around 10w ... a 5v 2A adapter would have worked just as well but it may be more expensive and you'd need thicker wires due to wire resistance, so they just went with 12v) |
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