About Voltage regulators

This page contains an archive of all entries posted to Gadget Freak in the Voltage regulators category. They are listed from oldest to newest.

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Voltage regulators Archives

August 8, 2008

LED lighting and voltage boosting

Solarraysa.jpg
Thanks to Made By Monkeys for highlighting this one - involving a dual-purpose torch / bicycle-light that was eating NiMH cells pretty fast...

Blogger 'Le Magicien' got to work, modding the device. He writes:
I like this torch a lot but... the incandescent bulb eats the NiMH cells pretty fast and the blinking leds... who needs them? So the idea was.. why do not replace the rear red leds with white ones? There's only one problem - white leds do not work with less than 3.2 volts - therefore some kind of voltage booster was needed.

You can read the circuit schematics used in the modified waterproof solar torch, plus some detailed photos of the modification work.

Continue reading "LED lighting and voltage boosting" »

Posted by Alun Williams on August 8, 2008 3:39 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

August 21, 2008

Circuit Design Idea - Precision capacitive-sensor interface suits miniature instruments

circuit - Precision capacitive sensor interface.jpgHere's another newly-uploaded Circuit Design Idea designed to give circuit building inspiration (click on the circuit diagram to expand it).

It covers developing a voltage proportional to the value of a capacitive sensor and transmitting these readings via a LVDS interface.

The Design Idea begins:
In some applications of capacitive sensors, the instrument's front end must be small enough to fit into a narrow space. Figure 1 shows a precision capacitive-sensor interface for such use. The square-wave output from a low-voltage 555 timer, IC1, constantly triggers the precision one-shot, IC2, to produce quasistable outputs for time periods T1 and T2, which are proportional to external timing capacitance: T1=KR0(CS+C0), and T2=KR0CS, where K is the multiplier factor.

Continue reading "Circuit Design Idea - Precision capacitive-sensor interface suits miniature instruments" »

Posted by Alun Williams on August 21, 2008 9:50 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)