I've been building my gear up over the last few months, learning etc as I go. So far, it's all been in my backyard. I want to go mobile and get to a dark site soon, so I needed to get off the AC power tether and incorporate battery power.
However I wanted to make a system where the only change to the setup is the power source, not the cables, etc.
So in conjunction with my father in law, I helped design the breakout box shown below. The hard work of putting it all together I left to him as that's he's area of expertise.
The red cable accepts 12V input - either from the battery or AC transformer I've been using.
There's a master switch for the box that controls all owner. I can flick that for instant shutoff if required. There's 4 cig lighter outputs (I only need one on a regular basis) with individual switches; 5 switched outputs on the left using "aerial" style connectors (I need 2 of these on a regular basis); and a special 8V connector output for my camera power.
All outputs are individually fused. There's detection for connectors that are "reverse polarity". A button can be pressed to show the voltage level in the system.
All the lights on the switches/boxes are leds (mostly red). I can disable the led lights by a toggle button so it's completely dark.
I only got my hands on it yesterday and haven't had a chance to use it for real as yet. Looking forward to putting it all together.
