As title says. I think my PC is using like a max of 500w when it’s juicing but idles for less. I was thinking of using an ecoflow high grade setup for this. Anyone have experience doing something similar?

I might switch to a small micro tower setup by Dell or Lenovo that uses like 120w max. The new Mac minis seem to cap out at 39w though which is crazy.

  •  Elise   ( @xilliah@beehaw.org ) 
    13•10 months ago

    Or a laptop, those are crazy efficient, have a battery, and can deal with outages. I don’t know anything about solar but perhaps there is a special solution for lower voltages? Remove the transformer from your laptop. For example there’s solar for charging phones, and perhaps that works for laptops too.

    •  CrabAndBroom   ( @CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml ) 
      7•10 months ago

      Newer laptops often charge through USB-C I believe, so that should presumably work the same way as charging a phone. Whether one of those solar phone chargers could generate enough to charge a laptop I have no idea, but if anyone wants to try it I’d be interested to hear the results lol

      •  stabby_cicada   ( @stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net ) 
        6•10 months ago

        You don’t directly charge a laptop from a solar panel. You charge a power bank and use the power bank to charge your laptop. I think that works fine, but you’re going to want a bigger solar panel setup than you’d use to keep a cell phone or tablet running, since laptops use a lot more power, power banks designed for laptops are correspondingly bigger, and you don’t want to take days to charge your power bank.

        And I’ll take this opportunity to plug one of my favorite articles, on the details of running a server completely off of solar power:

        https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/01/how-sustainable-is-a-solar-powered-website/

  •  poVoq   ( @poVoq@slrpnk.net ) 
    4•10 months ago

    There are off the shelf options for emergency power supply, even with the option to add small mobile solar-panels. But they tend to be really expensive.

    For low powered laptops there are even fold-able camping solar panels that have a USB plug. I have used that to power and recharge my Pinebook Pro on some extended trips in the past. Probably also works with chromebooks and some low powered ultra-books.

    If you want to try your hand at a DIY solution: the best way is to get a PicoPSU ATX power supply that can be directly connected to a 12V/24V battery. They are meant for automotive computing, but work fine with a regular battery, a cheap solar-charge controller and some panels on the roof or balcony.

      •  poVoq   ( @poVoq@slrpnk.net ) 
        1•10 months ago

        It is basically just another Linux laptop. Small caveats with not all software being available for ARM64, but for the most part it works fine. Contrary to the PinePhones there isn’t much complicated hardware in these laptops that needs special drivers, wake on notification or other battery-optimizations.

      •  poVoq   ( @poVoq@slrpnk.net ) 
        3•10 months ago

        After the first shock of all the import fees and taxes, which made it actually 50% more expensive than advertised, I got some good use out of it. Obviously one has to keep expectations in check, but 4GB ram with zram buffer turned out to be sufficient for all my usual tasks.

  •  Rbon   ( @Rbon@lemmy.sdf.org ) 
    2•10 months ago

    Another option you may consider, if you’re already open to using Apple technology, is a MacBook. It would be like having a Mac mini with a built-in battery. I’m not sure if you already have batteries in your setup, but all of Apple’s current lineup of laptops are basically equally as performant as their desktop options right now (excluding the super high end stuff like the Mac Pro).