[Jenn's] family is a single-car household. Because of this, it’s a little more difficult to get a jump start when the headlights run down the battery. Not wanting to ask the neighbors for help, her husband [Richard] decided to come up with his own solution.

Rummaging through the parts on hand, [Richard] went with his old friend Sonic the Hedgehog. He used two 12-volt, 1 amp Sega Genesis power adapters in parallel hooked up to a 12 volt, 3 amp  power supply. The end result is a 12-volt 5 amp source hooked to the car’s electrical system and used to get their road machine started.

We have enjoyed some of [Richard's] offerings in the past, such as Super Nintoaster and the Super Genintari but this is a bit less… eloquent. A few questions do come to mind. First of all, is this the best way to use parts of your 20-year-old gaming system?  How many amps does your average car starter pull down?  And finally, what kind of issues are we looking at with the lead acid battery under these conditions?  Weigh in on the conversation in the comments.

[Melanie] had some time this weekend so she whipped up a dual voltage power supply from parts on hand. This design plugs right into a breadboard and, unlike the last breadboard power supply we saw, provides two voltages at one time. 5v is delivered to one power bus while 3.3v goes to the other. Her design uses two linear low voltage drop regulators from the LF00 family (PDF datasheet) to accomplish this. Nice work!

Looks like they’re at it again over at Adafruit. This time they’ve produced a clock that looks more like it should be attached to a munition rather than cruising bedside. But, geek-cred aside, there’s a lot to be learned from their design. Like we’ve grown to expect, they’ve put together some good documentation on their choice of components.

Start off by taking a peek at their 5v power regulator. There is an extra diode on the output side that prevents reverse current from the 3v backup battery. The AVR ATmega168 that controls the clock is used to detect loss of power and quickly shift to the battery backup. They’ve also used the  microcontroller as a boost converter for the high voltage VFD, a nice trick we’ve seen before.

[Thanks pt]

Every electronics workbench could benefit from having a bench power supply. Converting a PC power supply works, but often, it involves splicing wires and limits the supply to only bench use, and building one from scratch is definitely an undertaking. To counter this, [silic0re] and his father came up with a detachable adapter that simply plugs into the existing connectors. The adapter provides posts for four different voltages and can be built in no time. It’s nice to see a solution that will let you use any power supply laying around without having to worry about the dangers of opening it or cutting it up.

[Thanks silic0re]

adafruit industries’ latest product is an adjustable breadboard power supply kit. We’ve seen breadboard supplies before, but like most of adafruit’s kits, this is the best design you’re going to encounter. It uses an MIC2941 voltage regulator instead of the more commonplace LM317. It has a very low dropout which means your output voltage can be much closer to the input voltage. Their example is using 3AAA or a Li-Ion battery for an output of 3.3V. Input can be through a barrel jack or terminal blocks. There is a selection switch for 3.3, 5, and adjustable voltage. Using the adjustment pot you can select an output voltage anywhere from 1.3V to within .5V of the 20V maximum input. The adjusted output voltage will remain the same even if you increase the input voltage. Like all of their kits, you can find schematics, assembly and usage instructions, on their project site.

Some companies insist on using proprietary pieces. It can be really frustrating when there is no apparent reason other than consumer lock in. It irritates us to feel like we’re being forced to buy their pieces. This is one of the more popular reasons listed when you ask a hacker or modder what got them started.  This project takes us through making a normal power supply work with the compaq proprietary 14 pin plug found in some smaller desktop PCs.

Aside from the plug itself being different, the motherboards require a 3.3v standby voltage. A normal power supply usually only has a 5v. Though there are even simpler ways of bypassing the issue, he chose to put an inline voltage regulator. Schematics are available on the site.

[via Hacked Gadgets]

This is a simple hack that could come in handy one day. [Mooner] wanted to use a Kensington universal power supply with his Macbook Pro, but found the adapters and peripherals involved “hideous”. His solution was to wire directly to the Kensington power supply. It’s pretty simple really, only a couple resistors are needed. It’s nice to have someone else do the research for you sometimes. While his final picture does look neat and tidy, we just don’t know how much of an improvement he’s made to the aesthetics. What do you think?

The Xbox 360 has a brand new motherboard. Dubbed the Jasper, it presumably has a new 65nm process GPU. The new box has a 150W power supply instead of the former’s 175W brick. They’ve changed the plug design to prevent usage with old consoles. The most notable change is the onboard flash memory upgrade. Earlier consoles only had 16MB; new ones have 256MB. The majority of this storage will be used for the new dashboard, the NXE. The remaining space can be used for game saves. With the new storage, Arcade units are no longer including memory cards. You can see more images of the boards on Xbox-Scene.

[rocketman221] wrote up one of the simplest ways to build a high voltage power supply. This one in particular was used on his coilgun. Instead of building a custom circuit, he’s using flash charging boards from disposable cameras. Six 450V 470uF caps are wired in parallel to make up the bank. Two of the charger boards are wired to one switch to initiate the charging process. Four additional boards are wired two a second switch for the second charging stage. The part cost on this is incredibly cheap and it only requires a 3.3V input to reach 450V. The writeup has plenty of warnings about the dangers of high voltage; you need to clean off all flux residue to prevent arcing across the circuit boards. Embedded below is a video of the bank being discharged through several objects. Read the rest of this entry »

This looks like a great addition to your breadboard. [Nerdz] wanted a power supply that was easily portable and adjustable. He built a custom board that plugs directly into the breadboard’s power rails. It has a pot attached to the ground of a 7805 voltage regulator so the output can be adjusted from 5V to just under the supply voltage. Anything that makes a breadboard less of a rats nest is definitely a good thing.