1-wire PSU

I've had flakey 5V power in my greenhouse for some time now.  I've tried various wall-warts of differing ampage but no go.   Finally I pulled power directly from the computer PSU this helped but it was still slightly below 5V  (4.86V).

So i built a 12V to 5V 3A convertor using LM7805 regulators in parallel.  Circuit diagram below.
Big thank you to Colin @ g1gsw with the help designing this.

Now, it is much better with 5.28V in the greenhouse (measured by a ds2438 Smart Battery Monitor).


Circuit diagram:

Can I fix my Macbook Pro PSU?

My MBP PSU died, as it seem all of them do after a while (just google it).  Loads of reviews on the ones sold by Amazon and Apple themselves got 1 star ratings!

So i thought can i open i up and fix it, maybe its a bad capacitor or something???

Well...  after cutting around the sealed unit with my dremel...

NOT!   I don't think Apple want you to.   So i bought a standard looking laptop PSU  (think normal DELL, Toshiba or Fujitsu PSU in black)  but in white with a mag connector.    It's been working fine for few days now.

Adding a 5v and 12v rail to my PC

I wanted to add a 5v and 12v rail to my PC, this removes the need for all the wall-warts (great US term there :)) i use to power various bits also attached to my PC.  Weather station, VFD etc.  (more on those later)

Front view showing the molex standard harddrive connector used.

Now installed into my PC