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EmPower jack source - was Airline style 2-pin 12v power outl

 
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gregcampbellusa(at)gmail.
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 05, 2006 6:33 am    Post subject: EmPower jack source - was Airline style 2-pin 12v power outl Reply with quote

John,

I already have a bunch of cigarette lighter outlets,
so the EmPower jack would be in addition to those.

There are lots of good 3 and 4 pin latching connectors,
but I'm trying to find the "other half" of the new airline standard "EmPower
connector".
I figured somebody on this list would know where to get one or two.

I have a Kensington Universal Power Supply that plugs securely
into an "EmPower connection", as well as a cigarette lighter plug
or 120vac power cord. So this one slim power supply will work
in the car, plane, or hotel room.

us.kensington.com/html/6368.html
<http://www.us.kensington.com/html/6368.html>

It's one slick little power supply and I got several of them at Costco.
I plan to keep one with each laptop, and hardwire one into the plane.

The neat thing is once it's powered up - you don't have to get to the brick
itself
to change the power settings. You slip on the appropriate "Smart Tip" and
the
tip will select and provide the correct voltage. It will "up convert" my
12vdc airplane power
to the 18vdc x 120 Watts that my laptop requires. Or I can pop the tip off
and replace it with one that fits my cell phone and it will put out 5vdc.
Or, you
can put on the splitter and do both at once!

In the past, I used to run my laptop in the plane from a kluge of an
inverter
to go 12vdc -> 120vac, and then used the laptop's AC adapter to go from
120vac -> 18vdc. But that was a pain! Cables everywhere - a noisy fan
on the inverter - and it produced "modified sine wave" AC, which I suspect
somehow killed one or two expen$ive laptop batteries - because they never
seemed to hold much of a charge after doing this.

This is a much cleaner solution - and the Kensington comes with both
cigarette lighter adapter as well as the EmPower connection. Since the
EmPower connection has a latch & four pins (two for power, two for data).
The power pins appear to be smallish, but gold plated & high quality.
And they are obviously rated to handle the 10 Amps plus that would be
required to meet the 120W continuous power output rating. I figured the
best
solution would be to locate a source for the EmPower jack and wire that into

the plane. Then I could securely click the Kensington power supply into
that
and easily remove it if I needed to work on it or use it in a rental car,
etc..


So the question remains - does anyone have a source for the EmPower jack ?


And the other half of the question - will I have to "program" the EmPower
jack's
two data pins so that it will willingly provide power to the gizmo I plug
into it?
support.gateway.com/s/Mobile/peripher/6500687/6500687mvr4.shtml

I vaguely remember reading something about "smart power distribution" in
which
the consumer had to identify itself and it's power requirements before the
power outlet
would actually provide the power. This was to provide two protections:
1) the consumer won't overload the supplier, and
2) the supplier would recognize when the consumer was drawing more
than expected
(e.g. the source might be capable of providing 10 Amps, but would refuse to
provide
more if the device tells it never needs more than 2 Amps, then it would shut
off power
to the device if it started drawing more than 2 Amps)

Depending on how they do this - I might need to program the two data pins so
they
will allow the Kensington to draw up to say 12 Amps at 12 volts. (Allowing
for inefficiency.)

Anyway - any sources would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Greg


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jschroeder(at)perigee.net
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 05, 2006 10:28 am    Post subject: EmPower jack source - was Airline style 2-pin 12v power outl Reply with quote

Greg -

This is more complicated than I understood, but not that complicated a
concept. I have a Motion 1400 and it has a brick. In an airplane, or car
for that matter, it is a pain to put it someplace that is out of the way.
Wiring a permament variable voltage supply into the plane would be nice.
I'll look into the Kennsington, but the Motion needs 19 volts/3 amp out.
Weird voltage. The brick input is flexible: 12-32v & 8 amp. I'd hardwire
this brick into the plane except that it really is great to have on a road
trip - both for road maps and email in hotels.

Let me know what you find on the Empower wiring, sources, etc.

Cheers,

John
On Sun, 5 Feb 2006 09:28:35 -0500, Greg Campbell
<gregcampbellusa(at)gmail.com> wrote:

Quote:

<gregcampbellusa(at)gmail.com>

John,
I already have a bunch of cigarette lighter outlets,
so the EmPower jack would be in addition to those.
There are lots of good 3 and 4 pin latching connectors,
but I'm trying to find the "other half" of the new airline standard
"EmPower
connector".


--


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