Tunecast II Power

[chris2879]

I am in the process of modifying the belkin tunecast II. My question is, where do you hook up external power to and how many volts?

[petefats]

Mine came with a 12v cigarette lighter adapter. Rewire it to any 12v wallwort.

[deplanche]

Depending on the controller you are using, you already may need 12v for that, so may be able to rewire to connect to that.

[chris2879]

How do you rewire the controller. Getting 3.3, 5, or 12 volts the the tunecast is not a problem, its just where on the tunecast to connect it to is my question!

[Macrosill]

There should be a 12v power jack on the bottom of the case for external power.

[ctmal]

I picked up a female power connector at Radio Shack to connect mine.

[deplanche]

On the bottom of mine is a female plug when the cigarette adapater would go. It's even labelled what part is postivie and which is negative. Open the tunecast up, find what those connect to, cut them and rewire.

[TERBObob]

the chips can handle 5 volts ( actually 6 , but whose counting ) from your PC's ps . You can hook it direct and then not worry about any "humm" or "buzz" since the PC has a regulated ps .
Those adapters are just that ... voltage regulating adapters . dropping from 12 DC to 6 or 4.5 DC

[A Marchini]

Mine came with a 12v cigarette lighter adapter. Rewire it to any 12v wallwort.

I think you need to be careful . Most wall warts are unregulated. They say, 12V at 200ma or something like that. If you were to look at the outputs with no load they can be very high.
I only bring this up because I have heard (on planetchristmas) of people cooking and even smoking their tuncast with a high current wart (I think the guy said 12V at 1000ma measured 18V at the input).

I used a 9V wart on mine, and it hovered around 13.1V when connected to the Tunecast II. This should be fine since a car, when running, gets well above 12Vs.

That said, 12V from a PC should be nice and steady at 12V.

Tony M.

[sjwilson122]

Just a little FYI. I also have the Tunecast II. The jack in the bottom of the unit is for 12 volts. From that jack the power goes directly into a 5 volt regulator.

[A Marchini]

Just a little FYI. I also have the Tunecast II. The jack in the bottom of the unit is for 12 volts. From that jack the power goes directly into a 5 volt regulator.

Which would explain why smaller unregulated supplies would work fine.

Also an unregulated supply with a higher peak voltage could overwhelm the regulators heat dissapation capability. Current remains the same but the voltage drop will increase.

Tony M.