Is A 12v Adaptor The Same As A 12V Trickle Charger ?

[redgriff500]

I'm building a site radio using spare car parts (tougher and louder than what's generally available).

I'll use a 12v leisure battery so it's lighter and won't leak which just leaves the way to charge it.

I have car chargers but obviously they are bulky.

Can I just use a 2 or 3 amp 12v adaptor or is a simple battery charger more than this ?

Cheers

[buggalugs]

It's more than that, chargers limit current and bring the voltage to float up around 13-14v, a 12v adapter is just a 12v adapter. If the battery is flat it'll just blow the adapter straight away and conversely it'll never charge the battery up fully.

HTH

[fozzymandeus]

You'll need more than 12V to charge the battery.

If you use a power supply to charge the battery, bad things will happen as they don't like being overcharged.

Good trickle chargers are sophisticated beasts that change their mode depending on the battery charge, rather than a simple DC PSU.

[redgriff500]

I thought it might be but this:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AC-DC-12V-2A-ADAPTOR-UK-...

Looks remarkably like this:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SILVERLINE-12V-BATTERY-T...

Except the first one has 4x the amps

[fozzymandeus]

They are going to look similar from the outside, and internally they'll have a lot in common:

They'll both constitute a switch mode power supply with some control electronics, however the trickle charger will have some feedback control that'll switch it off if the output impedance crosses some sort of threshold.

PSUs and chargers are 95% similar... just they are different enough to be useless when interchanged.