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Firstly, I'm unsure if this belongs here or in electrical engineering, but I decided on here incase anyone else has attempted a similar thing.

I've had a raspberry pi and an old wooden chest lying around for a while, and I've decided to combine the two into a portable emulation device. Somewhere between a build and an art project. I've build towers before so I'm not a total noob, but I have almost no experience with the complex electrical side.

I've sorted all the parts from various spares, but I'm struggling to understand how I'm going to power it. The monitor I've salvaged is powered by a kettle lead, but the raspberry pi is just a 5v dc cable I believe. I don't want to have multiple cables running out of this thing, so I'm looking to somehow combine them. My initial thoughts are to use a PC PSU, so there can be a single kettle lead going into the box, and then use the PSU to power the pi, as well as any fans or hard drives that I add, but I have no idea if I can run the monitor through a PSU. To my knowledge, PSUs tend to have 5v and 12v outputs, and the screen will need the full 240. Should I somehow split the kettle lead input as it goes into the box, so that it feeds to the PSU and the monitor separately, or can I run everything through the PSU?

Apoligies for rambling, I just want to know if this is going to have any chance of working before I start. Also, I know what I'm doing is not efficient and I could just buy a laptop, but it's about the aesthetic and using up parts I have lying around. Thanks for your help.

Chrisjde
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  • What on earth is a kettle lead? And why can't you just connect an ordinary $5 Pi power supply brick to whatever else is bringing power to your project? – JayEye Jul 30 '19 at 17:51
  • Why not just use a power bar in the box (this would give you the one wire you are looking for and allow plugging in whatever you need to power the screen pi etc.) – Steve Robillard Jul 30 '19 at 20:41
  • Never heard of "kettle lead". I googled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPhJBMSGEN4. and I know I actually have been using it since my PC days. My favourite hobbyist project PSU these days is 200VAC kettle lead to Win7/10 PC ATX12V PSU, which I extract 12V, 5V, and 3V3 for my Arduino and Rpi projects. I always thought that kettle lead is from the great American country that invented IBM PC. Now I know I was wrong, it was invented by the also great European country. But I know that because the world is flat, so almost all kettle leads are made in another great Asian country. – tlfong01 Jul 31 '19 at 00:55

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Sorry, I don't have enough reputation to post a comment, but you may decide this is an answer.

Your question is possibly a duplicate of Should I tear apart USB PSU or get a dedicated switching PSU? . That OP has the same problem - how to include a Pi power supply in an enclosure that has mains power.

You could look at products of the company Meanwell, especially Meanwell RS-5-15 or APV-16-5. The first number is output power (watts) and the second is output potential (volts).

Peter bill
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