I'm planning to build my own laptop for custom reasons and realized I may mainly hit some power-related problems. Unfortunately, no answer can be found concerneing Thin Mini ITX boards.
Considering that a 3×10 12v battery pack will do it, there's still a vdrop -or even vdrrop- that need to be handled.
So the question is: Is there any pre-made 12v (battery pack) to a stable 12v 10A voltage regulator ?
The problem is they seems to be nowhere to be found and the closest thing I have is a 7812 regulator (https://www.radioshack.com/products/radioshack-12v-fixed-voltage-regulator-7812?variant=20332038341), which is unfortunately not enough.
(more questions may come, I will edit the post accordingly)
Original question: will things works just fine if I power the motherboard with a -correctly packed- AA or AAA battery pack ?
Now the details:
- Is any power regulator's needed ? (A power inverter for cars is not a good solution) -> Edit: Yes for a power regulator, you don't want a vdrop or even vdroop when the batteries are depleting.
- Thin Mini ITX motherboards often comes with a single power input that can be switched from 12V or 19V, thus allowing them to be battery-powered more easier than normal Mini ITX boards.
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Also, they do often have an LVDS port, which just make things even easier to connect a laptop display.
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The power draw will surely get higher than laptops. This will be avoided by including a bigger battery pack, underclocking and undervolting is also planned to fit laptops' CPU specifications.
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But such Thin Mini ITX motherboards are mostly designed to use even less power than normal ITX boards.
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Also, the motherboard will be explicitly chosen according to its power draw
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The calculated TDP will be around 65 watts, which exactly fits a Sandy Bridge Core I5 laptop.
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A whole normal ITX system with a desktop Core I7 only uses 73 watts: http://blogs.tigarus.com/patcoola/2016/08/31/intel-i7-6700t-processor-review/
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The battery gauge will simply be a voltmeter, if there's a way to get that through an Arduino setup or even simpler, that'll do it.
The concept:
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I know laptops exists, but none of them have a 15" touch display with a Core I7 Quad Core CPU
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Only a very few laptop can transform into a true tablet, and they're getting "old" now (e.g. Acer R7). The deal is also to revive that concept.
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The custom laptop mainly cancels planned obsolescense. This concerns a bigger and removable/switchable battery pack, a bigger CPU heatsink -so it can stay passive longer (and use less power)- and also have an easier component upgrading system.
Best Answer
If your board does not already have a power converter from nominal 12v, you can use what's known as a DC-DC power supply. Some are available here:
http://www.mini-box.com/DC-DC
They are meant to convert generic nominal 12v power to consistent 12v, 5v, and 3.3v power for computers. Common applications are car-computers, where source voltage can be anywhere from 10-15VDC and be variable and somewhat noisy in normal conditions.
As you mentioned, some mini ITX boards already have this circuitry on the board itself and accept a single 12v input. If you're using one of those and concerned about the stability or input voltage being too high, you can use a simple 12v voltage regulator.