I’m building out a nano aquarium and my under-stand real estate is sparse. One of the big contributors to bloat is the infinite number of AC/DC bricks which come with every device — and most devices are now DC powered. All the Vortechs have one. The skimmer DC pump has one. The top-off pump has one. The list goes on. You’re swimming in AC outlets and cords and bricks and cable management nightmares…
You could just use one power brick, but you risk losing everything if that brick fails. And you still have different devices at different voltages. And you don’t want one bad device to take down everything…
Enter the DCBuddy!
I whipped up the DCBuddy to solve my problems of:
- Accepting 2 power supplies in and using an ideal-diode OR to use both supplies. Input is barrel jack, DIN-4 (see: Meanwell OWA-120U-24), or 4-pin MicroFit (see: Apex 1Link).
- Distributing 24V power from the input to multiple outputs.
- Stepping down 24V to 12V, on multiple outputs. 5A total.
- Stepping down 24V to 5V, on multiple outputs. 5A total.
- Accepting the Neptune Apex 1Link power input from an EB832 (CAN + 24V), and distributing the CAN bus to the other 24V ports.
Each outlet is short-circuit protected, up to about 2.3A — enough for most smaller pumps (50W at 24V). The 5V power comes out on USB-A outlets (no resistor setting, no data, just power), each limited to 2A — enough to run a Raspberry Pi.
Boards ordered, let’s see how well it works!
The project grew from here — documentation lives at reefvolt.com and the open hardware and firmware files at blueacro/reefvolt-dcbuddy.
Originally posted to the DCBuddy thread on Reef2Reef.