Computer Power Supply for Transformer.

[stldodge]

Can a power supply be used to power acces. on our Garden Railroad? It has 12 volts at the plugs for things like hard drives, CD drives, etc. Would there be enough power for lights, signals that use LED's for light?

[piercedan]

A computer power supply can be used for lights, esp LED's.

Since led's are less than 5 volts, you can use the 3.3 or 5 volt outputs with a resistor for each led.

 There are 2 basic voltages for led's and the most important thing to do is limit the current to the led's.  I always run my LED's at 3/4 of the current as heat is the biggest factor for LED life. 

 

The 12 volt line can be used for the malibu type of bulb and i use the 4 watt version, 7 watt bulbs are too much light in my opinion.

 

Be sure to have a ground fault if you are using outdoor lighting. 

[Anonymous]

Sure, your UPS has many power points (outlets) in back you can hook up if you know what your doing. My computer UPS has 9 power points but cost is to sum a factor.

Old and new power supply from inside a computer should be 12v discharge. Check thou before hooking up.

Old VHS machines have motors in them which can be use, gears and such.

 

Toad (wating for dad to come home)

[Anonymous]

You might also try to put your hands on a laptop power supply.  While scrounging through a pile of transformers to light accessories, I noticed an old IBM thinkpad power supply I have puts out 4.5 amps - way tidier than using a desktop power supply.  You might pick up one or more of these at your local PC disposal location.

Being you're obviously trying to save money, something I recently did was use the lights from the battery powered lights available at many places.  I picked up sets ranging from 10 to 18 lights per set on sale from Ikea for $1 each.  For 3V bulbs I wire as many as necessary in series to match my voltage.  Some of these sets use LEDs but I happen to like incandescents because I've tried a number of LEDs and have yet to find any that have the same look.

Something else you might consider is building voltage regulators (LM317T) so you can power things with varying voltages from a single power supply.  I've picked up various things like lampposts, lighted trees, etc. from outfits like Lemax that are pretty close to G scale.  Problem is they use different voltages.  At first I thought I'd simply use different Bachmann Big Hauler transformers (have a pile of them) and set them to the desired voltages.  This didn't work especially at lower voltages because the transformers are so cheap you can't set them to an accurate voltage - and they are so underpowered the voltage changes drastically under load.

So instead what I'm doing is lighting things where convenient for the staight output of the transformer, and building voltage regulators for things wanting less voltage.

Have fun, Bob