Power For Your Electronics Projects - Voltage Regulators and Converters

today in the workshop will be discussing power sources for your electronics projects will be working with voltage regulators buck converters boost converters and buck boost converters to supply a steady source of electricity for your electronic designs we're all charged up and ready to go so welcome to the workshop [Music] hello and welcome to the workshop now the subject of today's video may not seem as thrilling as something like building a flying nuclear powered robot or something like that but it is actually an essential subject and we're going to be talking about providing electricity for your projects now if you're working on your workbench this probably isn't an issue you may have a work bench power supply already but even if you don't if you're using something like an Arduino Uno you can simply plug it into your computer and use the USB power from the computer to power the Arduino in addition the Arduino also has a built-in 3.3 volt regulator to give you 3.3 volts for those peripherals that need it however if you're planning on going beyond that you're going to need some source of power in your project now if your project is going to take the entire uno and mount it in a box then you can continue to use a USB power supply or maybe plug a nine volt adapter into the jack on the uno and use its built-in five volt voltage regulator however if you're doing something like taking the chip out of the Arduino Uno and using it in your project on its own or basically building something that doesn't even use a microcontroller but requires five volts or 3.3 volts then you're going to need a source of voltage and that's what we're going to talk about today I'm going to show you a number of methods either line powered or battery-powered that you can use to supply the voltage or voltages that your project requires so I've got a number of different devices here to look at today before I do though I want to show either little test setup that we're going to use in order to demonstrate all of these devices okay I want to give you a quick look at the test setup that we're going to be using to test all the voltage regulators and converters that we're going to be discussing today I've got something sitting here in a solderless breadboard for you now I've got two Arduino Pro Mini is over here and as you can see from the flashing light they are simply running the blink sketch right now but this is sort of like the old Sesame Street routine one of these things is not like the other this is a 5 volt 16 megahertz are doing for many whereas this is a 3.3 volt eight megahertz Arduino Pro many so these two devices have different voltage requirements and we're going to use a number of different regulators and converters to power them up today and I'm going to show you how to do that now before we start discussing voltage requirements regulators and converters I want to quickly show you how I'm powering up these two arduino pro mini x' as you can see they're both running at the same time so i'm obviously giving them a source of both 5 volts and 3.3 volts and what i'm using is this little device here this is a breadboard power supply and you can buy these things in sheets i've got a sheet of them over here and you can just snap these things off when you need them these devices are really cool though i've got one over here mounted on this style of solderless breadboard and they snap into the breadboard rails and they have these jumpers over here to allow you to apply either 5 volts or 3.3 volts to the two different breadboard power rails they also have a USB power output there's a 2.1 millimeter jack on this that'll let you feed power in from a AC adaptor or a 9 volt battery there's a power switch on here and an even a power LED now while these devices are really meant for solderless breadboards and for experimenting they also make pretty good power supplies if you're gonna line power a device that needs both 5 volts and 3.3 volts at a low current requirement so don't overlook something like this as a simple method of powering up your projects but having said that let's move on and look at some other converters and regulators that we can use inside our projects now when you're powering up electronic projects you're going to find there's a number of common voltage requirements now we've already mentioned five bolts and 3.3 volts that I'm using to power these two arduino pro mini z' those are logic level voltages and they're the two most common logic level voltages 5-volt logic has been around forever I was using that back in the 1970s and 3.3 volt log dick has been around for quite some time as well now both 5 volts and 3.3 volt logic have very stringent voltage regulation requirements for example with 5 volts you cannot go below 4.7 5 volts or above 5.2 5 volts going to high can actually damage the components and going to low can cause erratic operation things aren't going to work correctly 3.3 volt logic has the same stringent requirements in addition to 5 volts and 3.3 volts there are some other voltages that you're going to run into 6 volts and 12 volts are very commonly used with motors with servo motors with stepper motors with DC motors you may also have an H bridge in your project and that has a voltage drop on it so in order to provide 6 volts for a motor you'll need 7 point 4 volts now we're going to take a look at a regulators and converters that can supply all of these voltages whether it be logic level voltages higher voltages or lower voltages keep in mind your project may need more than one voltage and if you're using a battery that can create a bit of a problem because what do you do use multiple batteries or use one battery to supply all of the voltages well I'm going to show you how you can solve all of those but before we take a look at our converters and regulators let's take a look at some of the basics of powering up your projects so let's take a brief look at power supplies now a power supply provides a regulated or unregulated DC voltage to operate your electronic components the supply needs to maintain this voltage level at up to its maximum rated current now power supplies can have a DC input or an AC input now here's a diagram of how an AC power supply would work notice that this is a linear power supply and switching supplies like the ones you have in your desktop computer work on a slightly different principle essentially we have an AC voltage source this is usually the voltage source in your wall outlet and will range from 120 to 240 volts depending on where in the world you are that voltage needs to be brought down to a reasonable level so we use a form of level conversion this is generally just a transformer after that the AC voltage is converted to DC this is usually done with a rectifier or bridge rectifier circuit finally that DC voltage passes through a voltage regulator in order to produce the correct output voltage now when using a battery supplies things are a lot simpler the first example we'll look at uses a linear voltage regulator it takes a battery of a higher voltage than the output voltage can passes it through a linear regulator another method of doing this is with a device called a buck converter a gain a battery of a higher voltage is passed into the buck converter which will produce a regulated voltage at a lower level there are situations where we need an output voltage this higher than our battery voltage in this case we would use a boost converter a battery of a lower voltage is passed into a boost converter which produces an output voltage at a higher level finally we look at the buck boost converter this is a converter that can accept an input voltage either higher or lower than its output voltage making it ideal for battery powered devices so before we get started I want to show you a couple of the devices that I keep around the workshop in order to satisfy the power requirements of some of my projects now up here I've got a box of linear voltage regulators these are three pin voltage regulators and these are kind of a staple in the industry and I've got several different types over here a couple of which we are going to be looking at in a few moments this is another three pin voltage regulator over here it's a very tiny 3.3 volt linear regulator and we'll take a look at that as well now this is an entire power supply unit it actually takes in either anywhere from 110 to 220 volts and who puts five volts this is indeed what you'll probably find inside a lot of the Power bricks now I don't necessarily recommend that you use these unless you know how to work with high voltages and so I'm just pointing this out because I do use these in some permanent projects when you're using this you want to put it inside and insulated enclosure and observe proper wiring precautions and proper fusing precautions now these two little devices over here are actually USB breakouts this is a standard USB and it's a micro USB and this is a great way to get 5 volts off of a USB power supply and so you can just use one of these in your circuits and it's a lot easier than trying to solder one of these connectors onto a circuit board because you're going to find that the pins don't exactly conform to most breadboards but these make it very easy to get 5 volts off of the USB power supply now this is a buck converter it's not one of the ones you're going to look at today but it's more of a heavy-duty buck converter it's got terminals for an input and an output and it's got a potentiometer over here a 10 turn pot that allows you to set the voltage very precisely it even has its own three digit display so that you can actually read the voltage directly on the device it's a handy thing this of course is the breadboard power supply that we looked at a bit earlier now here are some of the devices we are going to look at today there's a couple of converters over here a buck converter a boost converter with a USB output another little boost converter a couple of linear regulators that are mounted onto breakout boards to make them very easy to use and this device over here which I'll show you at the very end is actually my very favorite this is a buck boost converter that can both take higher or lower input voltages and provide a steady output voltage it's a perfect thing for battery-powered projects so just a few of the devices that we will be looking at today I wanted to show you that I keep around my workshop the first linear regulator we'll look at are the 7800 series of linear voltage regulators the 7800 series is a popular 3 pin voltage regulator family that has been around for several decades the X X in the part number indicates the output voltage so a 7805 is a 5 volt regulator a 78 12 is a 12 volt regulator etc etc there's also a 70 900 series of negative voltage regulators that have a similar part numbering scheme the 7800 series is available in several different packages the most common package is a to-220 or power transistor package when packaged in the power transistor package the 7800 has an output capability of up to one point five amperes if it is heat synced but pin outs on the 7800 are very simple pin number one is the input pin number two is the reference pin which was generally tied to ground and pin number three is the output the 78 hundreds are quite easy to use they require only two external components small electrolytic capacitors these capacitors are of no specific value generally I use 2.2 micro farad's for the input capacitor and about a hundred microfarads for the output capacitor so I've got a 7805 regulator powering my 5 volts arduino pro mini and as you can see it's doing it quite well my power supply is currently set to 9 volts which is what I'm feeding into the regulator this is measuring the current that's being drawn from the supply you'll notice it's fluctuating in time with the flashing LED this is measuring the output voltage which as you can see is very close to 5 volts the regulator is hooked up identically to what I just showed you in the diagram so pin 1 is the input pin 3 the output pin 2 is grounded and I've got a 2.2 micro farad capacitor across the input and a 100 micro farad capacitor across the output and that's basically it a standard three-pin voltage regulator powering up and arduino pro mini and although these voltage regulators like I said have been around for decades there's still excellent devices to use in your power supplies especially line power supplies where you're not too concerned about the efficiency of the regulator because there are more efficient regulators and converters that I will be filling you in a moment so let's move on to our next voltage regulator the next linear regulator we'll look at is the lm317 the lm317 is a 3-pin variable positive voltage regulator its output voltage can be set from 1.25 to 37 volts DC you set the output voltage by using two external resistors the lm317 can supply current of up to 1.5 amperes now here's the pin out of an lm317 pin 1 is the adjust pin pin 2 is the output and pin 3 is the voltage input now here is a circuit for hooking up an lm317 notice this is a little bit more complex than the 7800 series regulators we just looked at the two capacitors again are not critical I usually use a 2.2 micro farad capacitor on the input and a 100 micro farad capacitor on the output but again any values will suffice the two resistors r1 and r2 determine the output voltage the output voltage is determined using the following formula when calculating output voltage you generally use a value of between 240 and 270 ohms for r1 however any value in that ballpark will suffice keep in mind that making art to a variable resistor or a potentiometer would allow you to create a variable output voltage regulator now here's a demonstration of the lm317 linear voltage regulator the one with the variable output I've got it set to give about 5 volts out and it's powering the Arduino Pro Mini and as you can see from my power supply I'm giving it 9 volts in now I've got a number of components on this this device needs more components than any of the other regulators or converters that we'll be looking at today I've got a 2.2 microfarad electrolytic capacitor filtering the input and I've got a 100 microfarad electrolytic capacitor across the output now the value of those two capacitors is not critical you can use anything in that ballpark and it should work fine I've also got two resistors that determine the output voltage remember this is a variable output linear voltage regulator and it's these two resistors that determine what the voltage will be so I've used a 220 ohm resistor from the adjust pin to the output pin and an 820 ohm resistor from the adjust pinned to the ground and I calculated this will give me just slightly less than 5 volts and certainly it actually does so this is a great regulator to use especially when you're looking for a voltage that is a bit of an oddball let's say you needed something like 9 volts or 7 point 4 volts or something like that this would be a good device to use and again it's in a to-220 package so you could put a heatsink on it and get a reasonable amount of current out of the device so now that we've looked at this linear regulator let's move on and look at something else now let's look at another linear voltage regulator this time a module the PSM 165 linear module is a small break up with a 3.3 volt linear regulator it can accept an input from four-and-a-half to 12 volts the PSM 165 provides an output of up to 800 milliamps interestingly this is the same regulator that is used on the Arduino Uno to supply 3.3 volts the PSM 165 has several connections allowing a lot of versatility in how you hook it up starting on one side we have the ground and input the ground and an output on the other side the ground and output the ground and the input you can use any of the output input and ground connections to wire the PSM 165 into your circuit so here's the PSM 165 module it's powering the 3.3 volt arduino pro mini as you can see from my power supply I'm feeding at 5 volts and it's consuming a very very low amount of current and again it fluctuates in time with the LED flashing I've got a good healthy output voltage almost exactly 3.3 volts and I've used two of the pins on this side for the input to the module and two of the pins on the other side for the output and as you saw in the diagram there are several different combinations of pins you can use for input and output and the module itself also has a tiny power LED on it so a very simple module to use to supply 3.3 volts for your projects our our next linear regulator is another module the AMS one one one 7-5 is a small breakout board with a 3 pin linear regulator this regulator has a much lower voltage drop than the 7800 series making it practical for battery-powered operations the AMS one one one 7-5 has an output of up to 1 ampere using the AMS 1 1 1 7-5 is very simple a connector on one side has the input and the ground and the connector on the other side has an output and the ground the module has all the decoupling capacitors necessary and even a small little LED for power indication so here's my AMS one-one 7-5 module it's powering my 5 volt Arduino Pro Mini now as you can see from my power supply I'm only giving it six-and-a-half volts because this is a low voltage drop regulator so I can actually go down as low as 6 volts and still get 5 volts out it's also consuming a little less current and when you consider voltage multiplied by current as power I'm taking less power than I would with a 7800 series regulators so this module could be used with a battery powered design the output over here is very good it's almost exactly 5 volts and the hook-up for this could not be any simpler I've got the 2 wires coming from my power supply going to the input and then the 2 wires coming from the module output are feeding this 5 volt Arduino Pro Mini so a very simple regulator to use in your designs it's useful as well for battery-powered designs - the last one your regulator will look at today is a tiny device with a huge part number the L 4 9 3 1 cz 33 or cz 33 from my American friends is a 3.3 volt linear regulator this device has an extremely low voltage drop of 0.4 volts making it ideal for battery-powered equipment this series is also available in a 5 volt regulator the maximum current of this device is 250 milli amperes the pinouts of the elf 4 9 3 1c Zed 33 eros follows the first pin is the output pin the center pin is the ground and the third pin is the input pin in practice this device is hooked up exactly the same as the 7800 series of voltage regulators with only two capacitors required notice that the input capacitor does not need to be an electrolytic capacitor it can just be a small ceramic device and so here we have the little voltage regulator with the big part number the L 4 931 CE z33 regulator now I'm powering up my 3.3 volt Arduino Pro Mini with it and I'm feeding it six and a half volts as you can see it's consuming very little current and I've got a pretty good output almost exactly 3.3 volts now I've wired this up as per the diagram I'm using a tiny ceramic capacitor I'm using a 100 nano farad capacitor on the input and a 2.2 microfarad electrolytic capacitor on the output otherwise the wiring is pretty simple for this device and it works quite well this would actually be a very good device to use if you have a 5-volt logic circuit and you just have a couple of 3.3 volt devices that you need to power up the small regulator like this is very inexpensive and is quite efficient so now that we've seen a few linear regulators let's take a look at another form of regulating voltage and this is the buck converter now like a linear regulator a buck converter takes a higher input voltage and provides a steady output voltage at a lower level however they work on an entirely different principle than linear regulators they basically look at the expanding and collapsing magnetic field on a coil and they use that energy to provide an output now buck converters can be very efficient some of them have efficiencies exceeding 95% and so they're ideal for battery-powered devices they can also supply a decent amount of current in a very small package which is another advantage of using them so let's take a look at a couple of buck converters now the buck converter we're going to look at today is the mini 360 this is a very compact buck converter that has a 95% efficiency the mini 360 can accept an input from four point seven five to twenty three volts DC it has a variable output that you can set from 1 to 17 volts the mini 360 can supply up to 1.8 amperes continuous and Peaks of up to 3 amps using the mini 360 couldn't be simpler on one side you have two connections the input - and the input positive and on the other side - other connections the output - and the output positive so here's the mini 360 buck converter powering up the 5 volt Arduino Pro Mini now as you can see from the power supply I'm feeding it six and a half volts and I've got the output set - pretty well exactly five volts right now and it's working quite nicely now the mini 360 has a small potentiometer on it that you turn in order to set the output voltage and you should set this before you connect your load up because keep in mind this is capable of producing a wide range of voltages and you could exceed the amount of voltage you want for your load in this case the five volts or the pro mini now it's a single turn potentiometer so it's a bit touchy as to where to get the voltage set but once you get it set it's pretty stable as you can see from the meter over here if you're in a commercial environment you might even consider some sort of a sealant on the pot after you've got it set to the correct position so that it won't move otherwise the hook up to the mini 360 really couldn't be simpler I've got the two leads going to the input over here and the two leads for the output going over here and so that is the mini 360 buck converter now buck converters and linear regulators are really great when your input voltage your battery voltage is higher than the desired output voltage but what do you do when you have the opposite situation let's suppose you have two Triple A cells and you'd like to power a 5 volt project but of course you've only got 3 volts to do it with well for something like that you can use a boost converter now as the name would imply a boost converter provides an output voltage that is higher than its input voltage and they actually work along the same principles that the buck converter works on in fact it's just a different way of wiring a coil a transistor in a capacitor that makes a converter a boost converter is opposed to a buck converter so I've got a couple of little boost converters over here to show you so let's take a look at them right now the first boost converter we'll look at today is a rather unique device the PSM 2:05 is a boost converter with an integrated USB jack on the output it accepts an input voltage as low as 0.9 volts up to 5 volts DC it will output 5 volts and up to six hundred milli amperes the PSM 2:05 operates at up to 96 percent efficiency using the PSM 2:05 couldn't be easier to connections on the input for the positive and negative voltage and you simply plug your device into the USB jack to receive five volts of power so here's my PSM 2:05 powering up my 5 volt Arduino Pro Mini now notice in the power supply I'm only feeding two and a half volts into the device and yet I'm getting a very healthy output it's actually a bit above 5 volts right now now the hook up of course is extremely simple I've got my input going into the two pins on the PSM 2 0 5 and the USB output is being used to power up the Arduino Pro Mini so if you need to power up a USB powered device and let's say you want to use something like a coin cell or a couple of triple-a batteries this would be an ideal module for that situation the other boost converter that we'll be looking at today is the MT 30 608 this is a compact boost converter that has an adjustable output it accepts an input from 2 to 24 volts DC it provides an output of up to 28 volts at 2 amperes the MT 30 608 boasts an efficiency of up to 97% using the MT 3600 it couldn't be simpler on one side we have an input where the positive and the negative are connected and the other side is the output with the positive and the negative a 10 turn precision potentiometer on the board is used to set the output voltage so here's my MT 30 608 powering up a 5 volt Arduino Pro Mini now as you can see from my supply I'm giving it 3.3 volts I'm getting a 5 volt output for the pro mini now of course this is an adjustable regulator there is a 10 turn trim pot on here that you use to set the output voltage and one very important thing to do is to set that output voltage before you connect it to its load for example when I initially applied power to this and gave it 3.3 volts I got a whopping 15 volts out now have I applied 15 volts to my pro mini I would have certainly destroyed it so I used the trim pot here set it down to 5 volts and then attached my load and everything works fine so this is a very versatile boost converter it can boost voltages quite high from a very low voltage it's ideal for powering things like motors etc when you have a battery that doesn't quite have sufficient voltage for your motor the hookup of course is extremely simple two terminals on the input and two terminals on the output so we've looked at linear voltage regulators and buck converters which can take a higher input voltage and provide a lower regulated output voltage we've also looked at boost converters now and as we've seen they can take a lower input voltage and provide a higher regulated output voltage but there's another situation that we can run across with battery powered devices that don't really fit into either scenario and so I want to show you one more component to component that I think is absolutely fabulous to tell you the truth and this is something called a buck boost converters so it's basically a buck converter and a boost converter in this package now the advantage of something like this can be seen when you're using a battery-powered device let's say for example that you need five volts and you've got yourself a 7.2 volt lipo battery well a linear voltage regulator with a low voltage drop or a buck converter would be an ideal thing for this and it will work fine until the battery voltage starts to drop remember as you start using a battery its output voltage can start getting reduced when that voltage drops below a certain level your buck converter or linear regulator will not work and at that point you'd be saying hey I wish I had a boost converter well a buck boost converter can do both it can take an input voltage that is either higher or lower than the output voltage and provide a steady regulated output voltage that can do that as the power supply fluctuates so it's perfect for this scenario that it is described by using a buck boost converter I can supply my 5 volts even when the battery voltage drops below 5 volts and so I've got a really neat one of these to show you as I said it's one of my very favorite components so let's go take a look at that right now the buck boost converter that we'll be looking at today is the s9 v1 one f5 this is a buck boost converter that has a 5 volt DC output it can accept any input voltage from 2 to 16 volts however you need at least 3 volts to start the converter up the voltage can then start dropping toward 2 volts the output of the s9 v1 1f v can be up to one point five amperes with a two ampere peak this is an extremely tiny device that has only three pins using the s9 v11 f5 is extremely simple the three pins are as follows the input pin the ground pin and the output pin you can use this in place of a normal three pin voltage regulator although you don't actually require capacitors on the input and output as they're already integrated on to the circuit board one thing to note about this converter though it can get very hot so make sure you consider that when you're laying out your circuit board so here I have my s9 v.11 f5 buck boost converter and it is powering my 5 volt Arduino Pro Mini and as you can see from my power supply I'm feeding at 5 volts and I'm getting about 5 volts out now of course there's nothing remarkable about that a piece of wire could do that but let's see what happens when I change the input voltage got some other voltages stored over here so here's 3.3 volts and as you can see 3.3 volts I'm still getting the same output and I'm still powering the pro mini we'll go to the opposite end of the scale and here's 8.5 volts and once again I'm getting the same output so it doesn't matter what the input voltage fluctuates to the output is still 5 volts and of course this would be superb for a battery powered device whose voltage is higher than 5 volts but eventually falls below 5 volts so once again this is my favorite little device for powering battery-powered 5-volt logic so we've now come to the end of today's video and we've covered quite a few different things we've gone over linear regulators buck converters boost converters and even a buck boost converter and among all of those I'm sure you'll be able to find something that you can use to power up your next electronic project now if you want more details on any of the devices that we have looked at today please visit the drôme bot workshop comm website you will find an article that goes along with this video that describes the devices we've looked at in detail and will also give you links to other articles and spec sheets so that you can begin using these devices right away now while you're on the website if you haven't already please subscribe to the newsletter the newsletter is not a sales thing it's my way of keeping in touch with you to let you know what I'm working on in the workshop and to also give you the occasional survey so I can find out what sort of videos and articles you would like me to create for you and finally if you haven't already please subscribe to the YouTube channel really appreciate that you will find a link below the video for that and also in the corner of the video there's a little robot holding a subscribe sign just click on that little guy and you can be subscribed to the channel too and that way you will find out about all of the new videos that I'm creating for you so until we meet again please take care of yourselves and I hope to see you soon again here in the workshop good bye for now [Music]

Channel: DroneBot Workshop

Views: 860,295

Rating: 4.9341731 out of 5

Keywords: Power Supply, Voltage Regulator, LM7805, LM317, PSM-165, AMS1117, MINI-360, MT3608, SV11F5, L4931CZ33, PSM-205, Electronics, Arduino, 5 Volt Power Supply, 3.3 Volt Power Supply

Id: IT19dg73nKU

Length: 37min 25sec (2245 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 05 2018