I wanted to have a screen in my house displaying current location of the international space station. I love ISS-Above but didn't want to dedicate a Raspberry Pi and screen, I wanted to use something in my pile of retired electronics instead. I found ESA's HTML-based ISS tracker, tested it on various devices from my pile, and decided the Samsung 500T would be the best one to use for this project.

One of the first device I tried was a HP Mini (110-1134CL) and I measured its power consumption while running ESA's tracker. I calculated my electric bill impact to keep such a display going 24x7 would be between one and two dollars a month. This was acceptable and a tablet would cost even less, but what if I could drop the electric bill impact all the way to zero?

Reading the label on Samsung 500T's AC power adapter I saw its output is listed at 12V DC. The hardware is unlikely to run on 12V directly, since it also has to run on batteries when not plugged in. It is very likely to have internal voltage regulators which should tolerate some variation of voltage levels around 12V. The proper way to test this hypothesis would be to find a plug that matches the AC adapter and try powering the tablet from my bench power supply. But I chose the more expedient path of beheading the AC adapter instead and rewiring the severed plug.

A quick test confirmed the tablet does not immediately go up in flames when given input voltage up to 14.4V, the maximum for lead-acid batteries. Whether this is bad for the device long term I will find out via experience, as the tablet is now wired up to my solar powered battery array.

This simple arrangement is constantly keeping tablet batteries full by pulling from solar battery. This is not quite optimal, so a future project to come will be to modify the system so it charges from solar during the day and runs on its own internal battery at night. But for now I have an around-the-clock display of current ISS location, and doing so without consuming any electricity from the power grid