I have wired about a half dozen of the Model Power self sticking lights (12V) for my buildings and run it off a 1 amp plug that used to run my wireless router at home. It lights up the buildings well but I want to add more and I know as I add more the lights will drop in brightness. What is the recommended amps I should look for in the future?
You have 1A of power available at 12V so using P=I*E the most you can safely use is 12W of lights.
Add up the wattage of each bulb you have and you'll know how many more you can add until you get to 12W.
I don't know how much wattage each of those bulb are, however. Hopefully someone may know.
Eric:
How many additional lights are you going to add? You will need to figure the current draw and then get a wall wart that provides sufficient amps. By the way, rather than trying to power them all from one source, it might be better to divide your lights up into groups and use more than one lower amp wall wart. It will simplify trouble shooting later.
Joe
I did a search on grain of wheat bulbs and was able to find this:
http://www.hobbylinc.com/htm/cir/cir10101.htm
per the description they draw between 50-60mA @ 12V
1A=1000mA
1000mA/60mA= 16.6666
I would say you could safely light 16 bulbs with that 1A wallwart.
Thanks for the replies.. after I posed I thought it might be better to divide them up.. I have several extra warts floating around.
Also you should never run a power supply at it's max rating. A good rule of thumb is to leave about 20%
Springfield PA
Usually a wall wart supply won't be over 1, maybe 1.5 amps. There are exeptions. Much SMALLER is more common.
For slightly more power in a single supply, it's easy to find replacement supplies for laptops and LCD monitors on eBay, for $6 I got a 14V 3.5 amp power supply meant for some brand of LCD. This isn;t a wall wart type, it's a small brick with a short AC cord.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.