Sunday, January 26, 2014

12V wall wart power supply in a jar


I did this project a while back and didn't document it terribly well, so I'll keep it short. About a year ago, I took apart a 5V / 12V SMPS wall-wart (for a long-obsolete Iomega Jaz drive, 5V 1A and 12V 0.75A, IIRC) out of curiosity and destroyed its casing by doing so. Soon after I found myself in need of a 12V source of power, and running a wall wart without a case is a great way to kill yourself, so I needed to find an enclosure for it. So why not put it in a jar?

I punched some holes in the jar's lid to add a 3-prong IEC jack, a power switch, a standard 5.5mm DC barrel jack for the 12V (which plugs into the power supply via a 3.5mm jack), and a USB charging port (for the 5V), all held in with hot glue. The PCB is wired to those connectors and hangs off those wires like in the picture.

I also added LEDs because cool beans. Presently it powers my crufted set of computer speakers, and I occasionally charge my phone off the USB port.


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