hi,

I m trying to use an on-board processor for a mobile robot i m building and hence need to replace a SMPS with any suitable device... weight is not too much of a problem but the lighter the better... anyone who has got a solution pls pass it on to me...

regards
pradyot

 

This request is far to vague. You need to specify the parameters of the SMPS and then you need to carefully specify your requirments for a suitable replacement.

Without thinking too deeply I think it is very unlikely that a suitable replacement for an SMPS exists unless your requirements are very unusual.

 

Since robot is mobile, does that mean it has no power connection to AC? If true, why not use a simple battery? If you just want to run a processor off a main power battery, that can be done with a simple linear regulator. John

 

since i am having an on board processor i doubt if just using a linear regulator wud suffice the current requirements...

i wud like to replace a 230w SMPS 230v/1A... most certainly want to bring down the input voltage...

 

It is nice that you have an SMPS with an input of 230V that is a 230W supply. What is the output voltage and what is the current requirement? Are you asking if you can replace an AC to DC SMPS with a DC-DC converter run from a battery?

BTW 200 Watts @ 24 V is 8+ Amps. That will be a challenging supply to design. I'm pretty sure you will be better off trying to buy the supply you need. When it comes to this stuff any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

 

yes i basically want a design for a suitable DC-DC converter...
or watever power source so dat i can mount my cpu on the robot and neednt depend on an immobile AC supply...

 

So we need to formulate some requirements. It will be difficult to construct and maintain a battery system with a voltage of 230V. Is there some reason why this number comes up? Let us start with the required DC voltages and the approximate current requirements. This will lead us to a battery selection and then we can specify the DC-DC Converter(s).

 

You should figure out how many watts your computer actually uses. The 230 watt supply built in, is usually way more then you actually use. Since this is a mobile robot, it's likely you won't need to power a bunch of stuff, and you could further reduce the load by removing some unneeded hardware. Instead of a high end, video gaming, DVD pirating, surround sound, 8 gig ram, 4 hard drive computer, cut it down to just what you are going to need. Everything inside the case uses +/- 12 VDC or +/- 5 VDC, the sum is how big the supply needs to be.

Don't know about 230 volt inverters, but a 300 watt 110 VAC goes for about $40 here in the US...

 

230 V is the power supply rating in India... that's why the number comes up...

the input voltage needn't be that high... all i require is a 12v and 5v output with enough current to keep my CPU running properly...

 

How about an automobile battery? Or motorcycle, if the robot is not really large. Seems busy to use an inverter to make a high AC voltage and then step it down back to 12 volts through a transformer, even with a SMPS.