What type of power supply do most people use to power their chargers? I am looking at maybe sacrificing an old laptop supply and soldering an XT60 on it.

Thoughts and other options?
Anyone use a deep cycle marine battery?

I converted a computer power supply over. I had a bunch lying around. You can also buy a server PSU on ebay for cheap and convert it. Oscar has a post if you are interested,

Depends on how sort of power you are after, for charging a couple of lipo at a time a 100-150W laptop PSU should do fine. Anything bigger you can look into modding a server/PC PSU.

Oscar is right, but I find the form factor of the PSU more convenient. With the PSU, you can have 3V, 5V and 12V. Every voltage you need for this hobby. Nice to wire components up and test things without having to use a different power source. The switch is great also because the ISDT does not have one. Plugging and unplugging becomes a chore. Yes, you can put an inline switch but it still not as elegant.

(25-Aug-2017, 03:46 PM)voodoo614 Wrote: Oscar is right, but I find the form factor of the PSU more convenient. With the PSU, you can have 3V, 5V and 12V. Every voltage you need for this hobby. Nice to wire components up and test things without having to use a different power source. The switch is great also because the ISDT does not have one. Plugging and unplugging becomes a chore. Yes, you can put an inline switch but it still not as elegant.

Personally, I wouldn't recommend using a computer power supply for testing things. These supplies don't have any current limiting circuitry that you can control and are capable of delivering enough power to thoroughly burn something if you wire it up incorrectly.

The best tool for initial power up, proving power to receivers to bind them and general purpose RC stuff is a simple bench power supply like this:



They will give you any voltage from 0 - 30V at up to 3A and most importantly allow you to set the maximum current that the supply will deliver. If there's a short or some other problem, the output voltage simply reduces to stop excess current flowing. It's the ultimate smoke stopper and is what I use every time I power up a new build.

If you shop around, you can get one with reasonable quality for less than $50.

I have a 20A 13.8v supply that I also use for automotive work (can power an entire chassis) from an Aussie supplier.

It's worth spending money on a solid unit because it will serve you for years and there's nothing worse than having fundamental fear being iffy - a stable power supply will give even the crappiest battery charger a better chance of delivering fully charged batteries for years.