I see a few of the AX routers run 12-28v DC jack or PoE.
It’s a little bit difficult to cater for in my application. Pity the PoE wasn’t AF/AT…
In real world situation, how low can the DC power go before shut down? Is 12v a hard minimum, or will it work down lower than that?
Reason I ask is when used in RV/solar/boat battery system, power can get down to 10vDC.
You may or may not experience instability in operation. Just to be sure I would use DC-DC step up converter from 12 to 24V that can work in input voltage range that you expect.
Thank you.
That’s exactly what I was thinking too. I just hoped not to have the extra component there.
Any suggestions on a quality converter? It seems they’re all very cheap looking items from China. Would be good to get something decent.
My recommendation is to look at meanwell power supplies. I use them a lot in my line of work and they are great.
Thank you.
Yes they are very good power supplies, and I have a 12-48v here. But I’m only looking to power a routerboard for a 12v Starlink conversion and it needs to be compact.
I’ve ordered some little 2A step ups that should do the job. I’ll actually do some testing down to 10v and see how it goes first as well.
Simple step up might be not suitable, you should be looking for buck/boost ones, that can (should) keep the out power at a fixed 12V with input in a wider range, like 8V-30V, as there can be also higher peaks if there is an alternator and a starting motor involved, there exist some (still I believe of Chinese origin) that are intended to be mounted on vehicles, they are more than anything else a “regulator”.
Example:
https://www.droking.com/dc-boost/Auto-Buck-Boost-Converter-DC-12V-24V(8V-40V)-to-12V-2A-24W-Voltage-Regulator-Adapter-Driver-Module-Car-Power-Supply-Module
I wouldn’t power routers with low voltage such as 12V. I would always choose higher voltage, 24V for eg. in this case.
Look for an isolated converter if possible.
I was hoping to use one of these:
It’s a very confined space
Drifting off topic slightly, but I keep coming back to this option for my application:
https://mikrotik.com/product/wap_ac#fndtn-specifications
Straight up PoE connection, but it’s Wifi 4/5. I only need the single WAN and LAN ports, so that’s good.
It’s also pretty large and I need to mount it flat like on a table, so I wonder about signal. I’m wondering how hard it would be to remove the board from the case completely, as I can’t find an exploded diagram anywhere. Obviously I don’t expect warranty after that.
I really wish they had an AF/AT powered, 2.4/5g, full wifi 6 routerboard… any new releases coming up?
Nice one, thank you.
Maybe you could better describe your requirements.
If you are going to “gut” a device, there is also the cap ax:
https://mikrotik.com/product/cap_ax#fndtn-specifications
Some pictures of the internals are here:
https://forum.openwrt.org/t/support-for-mikrotik-cap-ax-capgi-5haxd2haxd/181821
It is annoying that on new devices Mikrotik have picked voltage ranges which are not directly compatible with float-charged lead-acid batteries.
Historically devices supported 8-30V so were quite happy running off nominal 12V (13.8V on charge down to ~10V cutoff) or 24V (27.6V on charge down to ~20V cutoff), and whilst you can use a simple DC-DC converter doing so makes the onboard voltage monitoring useless for checking the battery.