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6 Months Later...

A project log for Bench Power Supply

Designing an open source, modular bench power supply to rule them all.

the-big-oneThe Big One 12/24/2015 at 07:543 Comments

My power supply has been completed for about 6 months now. I cannot begin to explain how nice it is to have a real power supply; I wish that I had obtained one years ago! For anyone who is on the fence about a real power supply vs. a hacked ATX job, go for the real one, even if it costs a bit more time / money.

I find that I am using this supply all the time; just today, for instance, I was debugging a power supply issue on my Drum Master board (I have a 3.3v linear regulator which is supposed to source up to 250 mA, but which is browning out when I try to write to the SPI flash chip). By using my power supply in place of the wall wart, I was able to determine what was actually happening and how to fix it (spoiler alert: my wall wart's voltage was too high, and thus the linear regulator had to dissipate too much heat and would go into thermal shutdown). Could I have figured this out without an adjustable power supply with actual current readings? Of course. But it would have been harder.

Anyway, 6 months on, and I am loving it.

Merry Christmas, all!

Discussions

zakqwy wrote 12/30/2015 at 16:08 point

Great to hear a 6-month report! I've found myself needing more than one isolated power source for some tinkering, so I may need to build one of these too. _Excellent project!!_

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r.ger wrote 12/30/2015 at 11:41 point

Ordered the boards a few weeks ago and they just arrived, looking forward to assembling this! 

Thanks

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The Big One wrote 12/30/2015 at 15:44 point

Sweet! Keep me updated with your progress :-)

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