Ways to solve 12V wall wart proliferation

Hardware Hub
1

I have a tiny 10" rack that has 4 devices running off 12V 1-2A wall warts.
(There’s also one 19V 120W brick).

It seems to me there should be a way to more elegantly and compactly solve this.

Replacing it all with PoE is cost prohibitive in our current economic times - none of the 4 devices take a PoE input.

Today we see affordable very compact 4+ USBC port GaN chargers that include 12V out. I could then replace my power warts with: USB Type C 3.1 PD to 5.5mm Barrel Jack Cable - 12V 5A Output [1.2m long with E-Mark] : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits

Another option would be to find a mains to 12V power supply, there’s 4 channel ones intended for CCTV. That would require a bit of trivial custom wiring a cable with a barrel plug at one end to the screw terminals at the other.

Yet another option would be to use a PoE switch with 4x 12V splitters, but that is a bit ugly and bulky.

It’s unclear to me how fault tolerant the existing 4 wall warts are. We definitely don’t want to grow the fire hazard. We also don’t want to fry anything, or have problematically bad 12V feed quality (I hope that 12V DC power quality was a solved problem by now?!). Per output short protection would be good - I’m not sure what the wall warts do today in the case of a short.

It would be running 24x7 for years with low wattage, I presume GaN USB chargers are happy in that role(?).

Or maybe there’s other options? Am leaning towards the USBC 12V cables.

2

USB PD doesn’t really make sense… it’s more geared towards other voltages (5, 9, 15, and 20 volts) and typically only supports 3amps.

Any standard 12v power supply with ample amperage should suffice.

Not this one in particular but you get the idea.

3

I got a similar situations with USB and 12V PSUs piling up in my Hometheater setup.
Current path of action is a DC-PSU (Meanwell RD-65A to be exact) in a plastic enclosure.

My suggestion would be to do as I am doing: 8 to 10 Ampere PSU, four panel mount barrel-jacks and some cable work.

4

DeskPi DC PDU Lite. Only works if all the devices need the same voltage and are the same polarity.

5

A lot of problems are solved now but only by reputable brands that actually do pass the certifications for safety and whatnot. If you buy random stuff for cheap you are still likely to get psus with no isolation, that will pass through the wall power to downstream devices when they fail

2 Likes
6

Get a big USB PD and buy cables for each device: USB Type C 3.1 PD to 5.5mm Barrel Jack Cable - 5V 5A Output [1.2m long with E-Mark] : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits

7

Reading this sentence as if you already have a POE switch.
Then this is a possible solution: