Reed wrote:
"I've been looking to reduce the power consumption of my on-board computer (currently a Mac Mini), and came across a Nettop made in Israel, called the Fit PC2. It's a 12VDC unit, no fan, tiny size, lots of USB ports. It seems just about perfect for power stingy sailboats. My only gripe with it is the HDMI screen connection. All the small digital monitors I'm finding no longer have the 12VDC power brick that made older monitors (all VGA) perfect for 12VDC boat systems."
Hi Reed,
I've installed 4 of these, most on boats, and the HDMI input is indeed a nuisance. The advantage of the FitPC2 is that it's the smallest packaged solution you can get. As it uses the Intel US15W chipset and not the 945GSE chipset it uses less than 10 Watts before you start using the USB ports. The 945GSE does have VGA though (as well as DVI).
One solution is to use a HDMI -> VGA converter box. The one that seems to be used by most people for this purpose is the HD Fury. It uses about 1,5 W and VGA comes out the other end. It doesn't get to very high resolutions (like Full HD) but that's not an issue for our marine applications.
Note that the small power draw does go up if you add more USB devices, so if you require more inputs/outputs the difference with a 945GSE system starts to disappear.
I measured the complete configuration for one instance (3 serial ports, HD Fury, Kingston SSD, 5 serial ports) at 12 W with a n equivalent 945 GSE board using 15 W.
The other alternative is to live with a small inverter, and switch the screen "OFF" as much as possible (including the inverter). You can get ridiculously large AC fed screens now with very nice power draw figures as "ECO" is getting to be a commercial differentiator.
This is a neat low power solution.
For what it's worth though, the HD Fury supports 1080p output now. I'm doing this off the boat to a CRT projector in a home theater.