This is good :D, just had another thought, I seen USB GPS antenna's going for quite cheap now, so I could use it for Sat Nav too... :lol:

Yes. Get an invertor and wire a household plug socket into its output.

An invertor steps up the 12v to 240v, but you can't draw too much current. You will need a beefier invertor depending on the current draw of your laptop power adaptor (should be stamped on it...).

If you multiply the voltage and current it will give you the power. The invertor should be spec'd well above this so it doesn't run to hard...

A cleverer way of doing it would be to find out the voltage needed by your laptop. If it's 12v or around that then it'd make more sense to convert 12v straight to 16v or whatever, rather than stepping upto 240v only to have the laptop power adapter step it back down to 16v or whatever...

[Edited on 05-08-2004 by Tim]

Should be, yeah.

Can get them from loads of places.

Theiving git, any idea how to do mine ?

Got a spare supply. But it won't power up without motherboard, and a switch

maplins - 30 quid or so

Gonna jack the thread now :lol:

I want to do something similar, but the other way round. I was wondering if it was possible to power a three pin plug socket like you get in houses off of the car battery, so I can plug my laptop into my car to charge it when i'm driving along. Would it be safe to power the plug off of an invertor?

Ah ha, might have a spare power supply hanging around somewhere, cheers

Buy a cheap transformer and splice the wires together (like a spare computer speaker power adapter -- most are 12v and 500mA)...

Or power it off your computer (one of the 4 pin connectors which provide power to cd-rom/harddisks/etc...

Yellow wire is +12V and the black is Ground (0V)

Can anyone help with this ?

http://www.corsasport.co.uk/board/viewthread.php?tid=163371