Linked by David Adams on Mon 26th Oct 2009 19:32 UTC
The "wall wart" is one of humanity's worst inventions (not counting all of the inventions that are actually intended to kill and maim each other, I'll admit). AC-plug power supplies are a cheap workaround to various engineering, economic, and regulatory problems that manufacturers face, and they solve those problems by pushing them off onto end users. So what can we do about it? OSNews takes a look at an ingenious workaround to the Wall Wart problem, and some hopeful trends that might make them a thing of the past.
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Member since:
2005-06-30
You don't see many devices requiring more than 30 Vdc in the retail market as such high voltage is dangerous. Of course, some devices can use high voltages internally. However, they won't make it available as output. These devices are usually labelled as not customer-servicable for this reason.
Switched DC-DC converters are quite efficient (up to 98%). You don't need integer factors : it won't give you more efficiency and sources won't give you a integer voltage, anyway. You can even generate an DC output with a higher voltage than the input (e.g. 12 Vdc from a 5 Vdc source; step-up/boost configuration), although the output would have a lower current capacity than the input.