Its late and even though i tried some searching i found little solid info.
I have some extra auto audio bits. (head unit, speakers etc)
Can i turn this into a home stereo system?
Issue seems to be finding a 12V power supply. Some suggested a PC power supply.
Any more input?
In reply to CarKid1989: Seems like you have it all figured out, but the car stereo will lose it's settings when the power supply is shut off, First hand experience.
CarKid1989 wrote: Issue seems to be finding a 12V power supply. Some suggested a PC power supply.
I assume you mean one of the ones usually mounted inside a case, with the bundles of wires to plug into motherboad, hard drives, etc? IIRC, PC supplies sometimes don't like it you only use one of the voltages and not the others. I also suspect the current rating is probably a bit low for a stereo (depends on how big an amp you're using, I guess). A used laptop power brick might work, although probably still a bit skimpy on amps.
Power brick for my laptop is 19v and 3.42 Amps to give you a rough baseline for a laptop PSU.
no amp used. no sub
head unit. 2 decent 6x9 speakers. maybe 2 small round speakers (4 inch)
You will want to find something like an Astron 12v power supply that can supply around 10 amps if you want to run a head unit. Amps will need something substantially bigger.
later, matt
I built one of these for my dorm in college with a head unit and amp and ran it all through a pair of bigass Yamaha home speakers. I even used an old car antenna on the back. I powered it all with an ancient power converter that I'm pretty sure my cousin got at Radio Shack.
Aside from the speaker, I think I still have it all down in my basement.
Yeah, it will work. The PS is the tricky part. Look at the fuse in the main power lead and get your power supply to supply at least that much. So, if your fuse is 3 amps, you need a 12V 3A PS, which should not be that hard to come by. You also might have to add a capacitor across the power leads to clean it up if you get a buzz noise. Note that the "watts" rating on the box of the car radio may (and probably does) have virtually zero relationship to what the unit is actually drawing. That's "marketing."
More of a question than a suggestion, but is there any reason that a battery charger wouldn't work? Maybe even just a trickle charger and an old battery to smooth things out?
Hocrest wrote: More of a question than a suggestion, but is there any reason that a battery charger wouldn't work? Maybe even just a trickle charger and an old battery to smooth things out?
You don't want that going on inside your house.
Look on eBay for a linear DC power supply made by Condor or Power-One. They're fairly inexpensive and have good clean output. One like this would probably work fine: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Condor-DC-Power-Supply-HC12-3-4-A-7754-/360079811021
Hocrest wrote: More of a question than a suggestion, but is there any reason that a battery charger wouldn't work? Maybe even just a trickle charger and an old battery to smooth things out?
I tried that once... the wires to the headunit from the charger went up in smoke almost immediatly
Hocrest wrote: More of a question than a suggestion, but is there any reason that a battery charger wouldn't work? Maybe even just a trickle charger and an old battery to smooth things out?
I've seen it done, but I'm not sure of how it was hooked up. This was 20+ years ago, in a shop somewhere in the more industrial part of town.
Unless you have all the necessary electrical hardware laying around, this is going to be more trouble than it's worth.
First, you'll need something that can supply 12-15V of power at a fairly high amperage. Secondly, you're going to need a constant 12V source for the head unit to maintain its "memory." So, think small battery. But then you'd need charging circuitry for said battery...
Sure you can. I did that when I was a teenager. You want a decent 12 Volt power supply. Amps can pull a fair few, well, amps. Even with something decent you'll be down on power from a running car and alternator, but it will work fine.
This kind of thing:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/RADIOSHACK-12V-DC-10-AMP-13-8-VDC-REGULATED-POWER-SUPPLY-CAT-NO-22-506-W-MANUAL-/370604361490?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5649bdc712
Or you could DIY your own. Power supply isn't hard to build. Really just a transformer and some kind of rectifier circut. Just a simple diode bridge will work fine. Add some decent sized filtering caps and you're in business. Would be a neat project to learn some basics.
You don't need battery power to keep your pre-sets etc. if you don't mind tuning stations each time you use it. If you're only going to play CDs etc, no problem. If you want to set it up, find a 12 ni-cad battery and you're all set. You could make one up from AAs.
mad_machine wrote:Hocrest wrote: More of a question than a suggestion, but is there any reason that a battery charger wouldn't work? Maybe even just a trickle charger and an old battery to smooth things out?I tried that once... the wires to the headunit from the charger went up in smoke almost immediatly
You did it wrong.
This thread is really about what's laying around the house/shop. A UPS battery across a smallish battery charger, or even a UPS with extra wires run off the battery connectors would be fine for this use. And I'm going to assume we're not taking 1500 watt bass cannons here, just some tunes for the house for cheap.
A couple of guys on a ship I was on used car stereos for their sound in their cabins. I have a $30 head unit that sux as a radio (taught me a lesson about Heartland "bargains") but has a good MP3 player. Takes about every kind of chip you can think of, plus USB and CDR. My plan is to hook it into my existing $5 garage sale cassette stereo and use it as a MP3 player, put a gigabyte chip of toones on it and not have to listen to the same 100 songs on FM anymore.
One simple way to go - a rechargable SLA. Plug it in to run your stereo, charge it when you turn it off.
http://www.amazon.com/Volt-Rechargeable-Battery-Powercell-PC7-12F1/dp/B0047Q1JAS
I've used these for several different projects. One that size will power my IR beam mouse trap for a full night. I'd bet it'll keep the tunes playing for a good while as long as you're not rattling the walls.
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