The Lance J. Technoweb

I ended up buying a 2013 Honda CRV and decided to replace the stock radio/CD player with an upgraded unit.  This was far easier and cheaper than I imagined, but the hardest part was selecting a unit to buy  This article covers how I made my choice.   The basic form factor for my CRV head unit Selecting a Unit The Car I have a 2013 CR/V, which is the same series of all of the CR/Vs from model year 2012 through 2016. Therefore it was important to find a radio unit that fits this model. The CRV has steering wheel radio controls, and I wanted to use them.  This uses a technology called CAN-Bus, which is kind of like USB for cars.  Therefore, a CAN-Bus capability would be able to leverage all these steering wheel features.  In addition, the CRV has a backup camera that would be nice to tie into. And of course I wanted to leverage the existing speakers and USB port. Form Factor I wanted a unit that had a big display, and I wanted a unit that was easy to purchas...

I've had a traditional UPS powering my network rack for a few years now, but it isn't all that efficient because it sends DC battery power to an internal AC Inverter so that it can power gear, and that gear goes around and converts it back to DC.  It seems reasonable to skip this lossy process.  Here's how I did it. Uninteruptable DC Power Supply Diagram   Backup Voltage and Power My network's gear uses various voltages: 12 Volts, 24 Volts, and 5 Volts.  So my overall goal is to have three voltages available for my various devices.  Sadly, the computer UPS market doesn't seem to want to deliver any devices to satisfy these needs... at least nothing affordable. But there is another huge industry that had this need, and that's the world of small business security.  And in particular, small apartment buildings that use electronic locks!  They don't want their buildings to be inaccessibly locked during a power outage, and so they use battery backups all th...