DC-DC power supplies and UPS notification

[skkeith]

if you are going to cook up something external, use a Atmel micro controller. High reliability, low power, simple to use and program. Monitoring voltage is easy and also you can communicate with the PC via serial USB with no drivers needed on windows,linux,and OSX. You can get a dev board with all the hardware hooked on like the Teensy ++ 2.0 for < $20.

[Tupaia]

I can't help but think this is a solution looking for a problem.

Over the last 15 years I have run a VIA ITX with internal 12v power supply board, a Intel ITX with a Pico power supply and 2 Intel N3000 series fanless PC's all directly connected to house bank.

I have no start batteries and my engines start from my two house banks. My AIS will very occasionally throw up a low voltage alarm on engine start if my batteries are particularly low after an overnight passage. I run a fridge and freezer 24/7 and an HF radio and I have also experienced several electrical storms. At no time has my PC crashed as a result.

That is not to say that I have not had operating system crashes, mainly Win10, I now run Win7 but none due to power issues.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by skkeith

if you are going to cook up something external, use a Atmel micro controller. High reliability, low power, simple to use and program. Monitoring voltage is easy and also you can communicate with the PC via serial USB with no drivers needed on windows,linux,and OSX. You can get a dev board with all the hardware hooked on like the Teensy ++ 2.0 for < $20.

Or go wireless, esp32 has adc's and can send the voltage over udp or tcp, then node red is an easy way to do something based on the numbers. Cheaper as well, and much faster woth more memory. .