12 Volt Box ( I Cheated)

Okay so here is the short story. I upgraded the wiring in the trailer to 30 amps of service. I now have a A/C, Fridge, Hot Plate, Microwave, Lights, etc. 30 amp service equals @ 3,600 watts. Hot Plate along pulls 1,500 on high.

All is good in my world of camping right? Yes, except when we go to a place with only 15 amp service. Did not want to purchase a converter and I don't have a battery in the trailer at the moment. So instead of running the 120 volt lights, I run my 12 volt lights and take some of the load off my system.

So here is the Cheat and Cheap Cheat at that.

So I ran some 12 volt LED's and Low amp Halogen fixtures in the trailer. Okay, so where is the power coming from and why? I took a old Computer Power Supply and reused it to run my 12 volt lights, charge phones, run CPU fans mounted in a/c cover, etc.

There are places on the web like YouTube that give step by step instructions. But, here is a quick breakdown. Please NOTE try at your own risk.

Find a APX Power Supply. Mine is 500 watts. It puts out 18 amps. Stay away from DELL Supplies they are different inside. You will see in the picture above it is unplugged now. All I do is plug it in and we have 12 volt lights. 

Separate out the different colored wires. There are different volts in each color of wires. On most Supplies the Yellow Wires are the 12 Volt lines and the Black are the Ground.  The Yellow (+) and Black (-) wires are then run into your 12 Volt fuse panel to supply the different branch lines.

You will also need to separate One Black and the Green Wire shown above and wire them together. This is a bypass to make the Supply come on and produce power. 

I left the other wires in the harness and just the cut the wires I needed to make the 12 volt side work. 

All total I have 10 bucks and 30 minutes of time invested here. Power supply was purchased at Goodwill and I had the other wires on hand in the shop. 

On other Important piece of Info. You can run this and use a battery on the 12 volt side as well. You will have to install a switch to keep the battery from back flowing into the APX Supply or it will trip all the thermal overloads in the supply. Most likely will FRY your supply.