Samurai Posted December 22, 2009 Share Posted December 22, 2009 Ok, so here's the idea I'm working on. CD Rom/DVD/BluRay/[name your tech here] is one of the larger power draws in a laptop. Since the Fon 2100 draws 5 volts at 2 amps, and the Fon+ 2201 draws 7.5 volts at 1 amp, rather than hooking it up to 2 or 4 USB ports (specs are 5v @ 0.5A, and laptops tend to be lower) to supply the needed power, would it be possible to find a dead laptop CD drive and power the Fon off the CD drive connector? By removing the internals of the CD drive, you would be able to mount the Fon circuit inside the bay with only a network cable patched to the laptop physical NIC and an antenna sticking out. This way I don't have to bring my power strip or work with a limited 4xAA external battery pack connected to the router. Things to do: Compare CD-Rom drive power draw to Fon 2100 and Fon+ 2201 (the two I have currently) Double check height of bay and height of Fons Pinout on drive connector Find and mill plastic bay dust cover to hold Fon PCB (with openings for NIC and antenna) Cooling fan? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digininja Posted December 22, 2009 Share Posted December 22, 2009 Why not strip the laptop down and remove the battery and relevant circuitry and just use that rather than a full laptop? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samurai Posted December 23, 2009 Author Share Posted December 23, 2009 My main reason for hiding the router inside a broken CD-Rom drive and then putting that inside the empty laptop drive bay is so that I can power it off the laptop system (the laptop that is running ICS to the fon at the coffee shop or airport in the first place). This way It's compact, attached (so I can pull it out and play with the locals while switching planes in ATL), and I can watch a single battery meter on the laptop to know how much time I have left before I need to find a single outlet to plug in and charge back up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digininja Posted December 23, 2009 Share Posted December 23, 2009 When you said dead laptop cd drive I though you meant the cd drive in a dead laptop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samurai Posted December 23, 2009 Author Share Posted December 23, 2009 Sorry about the ambiguity. I guess I did write that at 2:30AM local time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nmaas87 Posted December 25, 2009 Share Posted December 25, 2009 well actually to put the power ratings right, i happend to meassure the amperage on the fon 2100 myself just some days ago. attached to an 6v battery pack i ran into the end to and drawn of about 800-900mA at highest. and that one does use EVERYTHING, gentlemen. we're talking her about 100% cpu, used ethernet, used sd-card mod, kismet running and scanning, an attached gps mouse which draws about 100mA thereself and gpsd running... so... psu are always a bit overdosed as they happen to just not bring the power they say on the labels.... so to get some spare space... ^^ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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