I am having trouble finding a powersupply to suit my needs. I am working on a more functional ATO or Automatic Top Off controller for an aquarium.
The one you see here is a simple five volt relay board and the powersupply is an AC/DC making 5v/12v but only at 1a. Fine for the 5v side and in its present configuration on 12 as well. The pump I am presently using is not drawing but about 750ma max. I want to have it able to supply more amps to support a larger pump…while still remaining as small as possible. I can find plenty as big as a juice box but also with more amps than I might ever need…I figure 2a to 3a should suffice. Anyone seen any like that?
Use two power supplies - one for 5V and one for 12V. Tie their negative outputs together to the circuit ground, or keep them separate and use the 12v one only for the loads
Use one larger 12V supply and add a switching buck regulator to drop the 12v down to 5V. I would guess that your 5V requirements are quite low so you may even be able to get away with a linear regulator
I neglected to mention the “later” part. This current set up is very manual. Plain old float switches to a relay and thats it. On/off with no intelligence. This is in a reef tank so there is a lot of motion so it does a lot of micro cycles each time it needs a top off. I am working on learning Arduino and the intent is to use optical fluid sensors and build in a buffer between cycles to prevent the aforementioned micro cycles. So, the arduino would power the relays and optical sensors just fine I believe but I still think I would need a dual output power supply wouldn’t I?
This one might work but its external, I cannot tell its physical dimensions and I dont know if that 2a is shared or one and one.
