Power from landscape lighting 12V AC lines

Community Projects
1

Hello,

First post so apologies in advance…

I am interested in powering electronics in my yard using existing landscape lighting wiring. It appears I have 12V AC coming out of the transformer, with existing lights nowhere near saturating the maximum power the transformer can support (600W). I can also run 15V but it looks like all the existing wires are tied to 12V AC posts.

In anyone’s experience, if I want to power a Pi Zero W, a Pi 4, or a Jetson Nano Dev kit, do you have examples of a power converter you used successfully? All appear to work off of 5V DC, and I’m fine with a solution for any one of these three: 12V AC to 5V DC. I think the jetson nano dev kit can go up to 10W, if current draw is a major factor, but I can go with just the Pi Zero W if that’s an unsolvable and/or expensive limitation.

I found some cheap looking stuff on amazon but would rather get a quality product here. I’d prefer an enclosed complete power solution (eg. ideally waterproof enclosure self-contained) vs building my own around a rectifier circuit or something like that.

Thanks in advance!

Me

2

You’ll need a bridge rectifier to convert your 12 volts AC to DC, then some large filter capacitors to smooth out any AC ripple. Once you’ve converted AC to smooth D,C a DC to DC converter like COM-18375 will drop the voltage down to a stable 5 volts a Pi Zero would be happy with.

3

Yes, bridge rectifier plus several thousand micofarads of filter capacitor. The peak DC voltage should be around 15 to 16V and possibly quite a bit higher, so make sure the capacitors and step-down switching regulator (not a linear regulator) can easily handle the peak voltage and current draw.

https://www.physics-and-radio-electroni … ilter.html