Battery Powered Intel Nuc Celeron

[Tru]

Recently I successfully powered an Intel Nuc off a portable 20 volt laptop battery bank and thought I'd share my story for anyone interested in doing the same

 

 

Background:

I'd say about 2 years ago my 4 year old HP laptop crapped out and I was in need of a new computer. Having interest in my new discovery of the Intel Nuc and not wanting to break the bank I purchased a 5th gen Celeron Nuc for only $130. With that, I was able to recycle my old laptops memory, the Nuc had a VGA port that also allowed me to recycle my secondary screen, I had a copy of Windows on hand, and ended up purchasing a SSD for $40 bringing the cost of my new computer to $170. My goal was to keep things cheap as possible and I was also very intrigued to test out this new Nuc that I had just learned of.

 

Although slow at times the Nuc's speed has been bareable for my needs, the one thing though that always bothered me from switching from a laptop to the Nuc was that I could no longer switftly move my computer to wherever I needed, it had to stay put at my workstation. This sparked the idea, with the Nuc being so small, that what if I could easily battery operate, keep it within a small profile and move it to where I needed as I pleased.

 

Now I know some of you might be thinking, you should've just bought another laptop, and yeah that would've been a good idea, but where is the fun in that? (and also I was already vested to the Nuc)

 

Process:

The Intel Nuc uses a wall wart that supplies it 19 volts DC, just like many laptop chargers. I had once owned and used a battery bank for my laptop which sparked the curiosity if a battery bank would work the Nuc. Some research online yielded only one instance of someone successfully doing this to remotely operate a telescope, or something or another. I searched Amazon for what I thought would be a good fit and ended up ordering a total overkill 50K mAh battery bank that had both a 20 and 12 volt jack along with 4 USB ports.

 

With the battery bank rated at 20 volts and not the 19 volts that the Nuc needed this caused some concern of compatibility. Some more research led me to find on Intels website that the Nuc in fact had been tested and working from the ranges of 12 to 24 volts. I went ahead and purchased the battery bank and decided to give a go.

 

The battery bank came with a large assortment of jack adapters, and I was fortunate to find one that fit (somewhat). With that I made my connections, powered on the battery bank, hit the power button on the Nuc and waited for its little blue light. To my excitement the Nuc powered on and began to boot up.

 

Unfortunately as the Nuc was booting, the display began to artifact and the colors were distorted once at the desktop. I went ahead and powered off the Nuc, wiggled 'best fitting' jack adapter and gave it another go. To my surprise the second boot was clean, no artifacting or distorted colors. I am also happy to report that my display and Nuc have been operating without any issue since. I'd also like to mention that I was able to leave the Nuc idling for 14hrs at the desktop only using around half the battery banks capacity

 

 

 

THOUGHTS:

This is a very niche project but hopefully I can help someone looking to do the same thing by sharing my experience.

 

Although I could've gone with an AC battery bank I opted for the 20 volt DC bank in order to eliminate the need for the wall wart, to keep a small and lightweight assembly, for its large capacity and also to simultaneously operate a DIY portable screen off of the 12 volt port (I have yet to run them simultaneously because I need another power cable, but my screen does operate off of the battery bank's 12 volt port)

 

This project has spring boarded me to my next challenging project, which is to battery power a desktop PC. I'm not going for a full on gaming/editing powerhouse, more so just a run of the mill desktop PC that can be used for light to moderate use in a small package and more importantly can be fully upgraded throughout the times. I have some things in the works and will share my findings when I get around to it

 

The battery bank I used is the Maxoak 50K mAh battery bank

https://www.amazon.com/MAXOAK-50000mAh-Portable-External-Notebook-Most/dp/B00YP823NA/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1537144186&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=maxoak+battery

 

Although I came across the  Poweroak 50K mAh battery bank which I'm pretty sure is the exact same battery bank $35 cheaper

https://www.amazon.com/POWEROAK-External-capacity-50000mAh-Portable/dp/B073R6NKLW/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1537144255&sr=1-3&keywords=poweroak+50000mah

 

 

 

 

 

[LinuxTek]

Interesting. Wonder if my Gigabyte Brix would power up from a vehicles cigarette lighter plug. 14.4 volts running. Wonder what I could use for a 12 volt hdmi screen...oh wait....also have a tiny new Samsung flat screen tv in the closet that uses the same kinda power brick for ....14 volts.

 

set cellphone to wifi hotspot....boom.........el cheapo computer in the vehicle with internet.