Journey into SBCs (ThatGuyB in ARMland)

Hardware Hub
289

I like your recent adventure reports. Also I’m glad you liked my post about DC usage in home and get rid of AC/DC power supplies.

I’m also planning to get rid of most AC/DC power adapters (mainly with 5V and 12V output) and replace them with one or two powerful ones (possibly with redundancy support with DRDN-20-12)

My choice for power supplies is Mean Well, it’s a well known brand in the industrial field with a very good reputation and reliable and quality products.

I plan to use:

  • Mean Well DRC-100A as main power supply for most of my home-lab and network devices in my small rack:

    • it has UPS support with 12V battery backup (I have 12Ah battery)
    • output is 13,8V (because it’s battery charging voltage)

  • Mean Well DDR-60G-5 DC-DC converter for 5V devices (RPi,…)

My devices (everything is fanless, with passive cooling):

  • router Mikrotik RB750Gr3

    • can be powered with a wide range: 8-30 V (13,8V is OK)
    • 2-3 W real power consumption

  • 2.5G switch from AliExpress

    • needs: 12V (not sure if 13,8V will be ok)
    • 3-4W real power consumption in my case where only 3 ports used

  • NAS: Odroid H3

    • OS: Unraid (with some docker apps and on-demand VMs)
    • 1x 2TB m.2 SSD (cache, Samsung 980 Pro) + 2x 4TB SATA SSD (Samsung 860 Evo)
    • needs: 12-19V, so 13,8V will be OK
    • 3 W idle, 15W load (Intel Turbo boost disabled)

  • DC/DC converter with 5V output (5,2V) - DDR-60G-5:

    • Raspberry Pi Zero 2W (PiHole)
      • 1.5-2.5W; (with USB-ETH adapter, running PiHole and NodeRED)
    • Raspberry Pi 4 with SSD (USB3) (Plex, downloader)
      • 3-6 W probably (~20 docker apps running)
    • Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB) with SSD (USB3)
      • 4-10W probably, it’s new - it will replace RPi 4 above
    • Home Assistant on dedicated Raspberry Pi 4 (with SSD USB3, zigbee and z-wave dongle)
      • 4.5-6 W probably

out-of-range devices:

  • PoE Switch Unifi USW-Lite-8-POE
    • 54V input
    • connected PoE devices:
      • Wi-Fi AP - U6-Lite (~3,7W)
      • small switch powered by PoE - USW-Flex-Mini (~1.6W)

Summary:
Current situation: 8 power supplies (AC/DC bricks) for every device
Planned situation#1: 2 power supplies (12V* and 54V for PoE switch)
Planned situation#2: 1 power supply (12V* only)

  • I can use some DC/DC boost converter from 12V to 54V for powering PoE switch (which is powering Wi-Fi AP and small switch) but it’s quite expensive DDR-120A-48 (with adjustable 48 ~ 56V output)*

* - 13,8V exactly

Simple diagram: 

      ┌─────────┐
      │         │
      │AC ~230V │
      │         │
      └────┬────┘
           │
           │
 ┌─────────▼────────┐
 │      DC UPS      │                           12V/5V DC
 │ (MeanWell        │                           small devices:
 │   DRC-100A or    │
 │   AD-155A or     ├────────────────────┐
 │   PSC-100A)      │                    │12V
 │                  ├─────────────┐      ├──────► Router
 └───────┬─▲────────┘             │      │12V
         │ │                      │      ├──────► NAS (Odroid H3)
         │ │                      │      │12V
         │ │                      │      └──────► Switch
         │ │                 ┌────┴────┐
 ┌───────▼─┴───────────┐     │ DC/DC   │  5V
 │                     │     │converter├────────► Raspberry Pi Zero 2W
 │                     │     │         │  5V
 │      12V battery    │     │ output: ├────────► Raspberry Pi 4
 │                     │     │   5.2V  │  5V
 └─────────────────────┘     └─────────┴────────► Raspberry Pi 5

But also I’m thinking about solar controller (MPPT) for example Victron SmartSolar instead of Mean Well DRC-100A.

  • instead of solar panel you can plug output from power supply (wide range, for example 12-75V)
  • it should have better circuits for charging battery
  • it has API to monitor energy usage, battery charging and other things, … (for example using Venus OS)
  • what do you think?
3 Likes