Power supply for Toughbook

I need to provide my own power supply to a Toughbook over a long cable. Lets say 10 meters (but it might be more).
I will have an adjustable power supply in a room and make my own power cable to plug into the Toughbook in another room.

Does anyone know what is the power supply input voltage range of these laptops?

Their customer support is useless, all they did is send me the spec sheet for the battery and the AC power supply that comes with the laptop, neither of which I'm going to use.

Thanks for any help!

 

Well the OEM Panasonic is 15.6 vdc. And LOTS of people use 16vdc IBM supplies. There was a post about allowable variance in voltage. I will search.
Personally, I would not run anything more than + or - 5%. That's 14.82vdc to 16.38 vdc. Just remember that as voltage goes down, amperage draw goes up. Also, the longer the distance between the source and load the more the voltage drop.
Hopefully the Dragon ( mnementh ) will chime in with more precise information. I was looking for his original post on this subject.

Here is a good read.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic/323006-toughbook-power-supply.html


http://forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic/530172-compatible-toughbook-power-supplies-other-than-oem.html

 

Thanks for the link. One of the postings said the Toughbook can be powered up to 20VDC. The Li-ion battery output is 11.1V typical. Maybe it would drop to 10V when the battery is drained.
If the Toughbook could accept 10-20V that would be great and that's the information I need to know before I risk frying something.

At high currents there are larger voltage drops over the length of the cable due to the resistance of the wires. What I'm worried about is as the current changes (for example when the hard drive spins on and off or the display turns on or off), that could cause large voltage changes seen at the laptop power input. Might be a problem or might not depending on how well the laptop power supply circuits are made, which I assume are DC/DC converters.

 

at that length you should have thick wires. you could make your power supply with stabilized voltage around 11V and capable of 60-70W drain.

 

Yes I read that one post about 20v. BUT, I have also read posts about needing to replace fuses on the motherboard or entire motherboard after running a 19v power supply. DO NOT RUN 20V
First of all, what model Toughbook? Almost all Toughbooks use a 5 amp power supply. This tells us the max amp draw.
If you want to be sure about any voltage drop, rig up a volt meter at the end of a 10 meter wire run. Volt meters go in parallel, and amp meters go in series. Then work up some kind of 5 amp load. That will tell you the exact voltage drop.

 

Here you go. Use 16v source and 10awg wire.

View attachment 91901

 

I think you should be able to get away with +/-10 on the voltage, look it up to see if there is a spec.
I would run the power supply 10% high, then allow for 10% drop so that you can use thinner
wire, probably 12 to 14. Use the calculator that Shawn used.
My Panasonic supply measures in at 15.7V no load.
Hopefully your power supply will have excellent regulation.
Shawn's sizing is safer but if you can confirm that 10% high (17V) is safe I'd go with that.
I agree that 19 to 20V is too high.

 

Just remember that most Tbooks are passively cooled. Low voltage/ high current draw will increase heat.

 

Thanks for all of the info. I won't use 20V. Looks like it will be safe to use a 16V power supply.
I haven't chosen the exact Toughbook model that I will be using for this project.
It would be nice if Panasonic technical support or a spec sheet could give me the information I need but I guess that's asking too much.
I'll post results when I get the system built up...

 

What kind of performance and toughness are you wanting out of this unit? What environments will it be operation in?

 

Perhaps I'm missing something, but why not use a 230v/110v extension cable to get from one room to another and then use a regular Toughbook adapter?

 

Its going to display and record a couple of streams of digital video so I don't think it has to be an ultra-fast machine. Its going to be moved around a lot so that's why I want a toughbook. It will be used in climate-controlled shelters.

Yes that seems like it would be the simplest way to do it but its not an option for me in this case.

 

Ah, climate controlled shelters and no AC power are a good reason to get a Toughbook with your own DC-power.
Good luck building it, perhaps a small suggestion to have a (long trial) with a cheap laptop/toughbook first to see if the power is stable enough?

 

Displaying compressed video where the processor runs the decoder is actually highly CPU intensive. If you are talking about a newer model then you're probably fine, but something like a Pentium M probably will not cut if if the streams are HD video. Playing a 1080i youtube video usually brings a 2 GHz core 2 Duo to 100% utilization. Try running task manager with the tasks to see what the CPU utilization is.
The processing is square law as related to the two dimensions of the image so processing requirements drop rapidly with lower resolutions.

 

If no AC power, what about a Lind power supply near the Toughbook? If you need even more stability, feed the Lind with a buck/boost power supply (I've used many from mp3car.com) and you'd get filtering and a power supply that can basically have anything from 6-32Vdc thrown at it.

 

Why complicate things? I would run an IBM car charger (16vdc and CHEAP) and 10g wire to the Tbook. Probably have $15.00 invested in the whole deal. IBM chargers are heavy duty and stable. Mount it securely next to the battery and run 10g wire direct to the Tbook. If you leave the charger near a frequently moved laptop, it will break wires / connectors, or at least be a PITA to move all the time. I would probably solder the 10g directly to the charger.
I am cheap, but I think Linds are way overpriced.

My 2cents( I may not have any sense left.)

 

That's not complicating things, that's making sure things work. A 10ga power cable not only increases strain on the barrel connector, the 10ga itself won't fit into a barrel connector, making another splice a requirement. The Lind adapters are a proven performer in harsh conditions and with the right DC cable, all the connectors are secure as well.

 

I'm looking at the Toughbook 52 with an i5. That should be more than adequate.

 

I think that the Toughbook will work fine with a 16VDC power supply 30-50 feet away. Even at up to 16AWG wires the voltage drop will be 1Vmax @5A which I think should be ok. Of course I'm not 100% sure and will have to test it first (because Panasonic tech support won't give me an answer on what is the voltage input range after 2 phone calls and 3 emails). The Lind power supply will be my backup plan and btw cost isn't an issue.

 

I hate to sound rude on boards, but the first thought that occurs to me upon reading the OP question is, If you need to ask the voltage, should you really be attempting this at all? There are many considerations to maybe inquire about like amps, draw, length, wire size, etc. But if you need to ask the starting voltage the brick puts out, maybe you should enlist some help...... Just sayin...

 

So you dig up a year old post just to say that? Nice...

We get a lot of newbie questions around here.