Portable Bench Supply Carries Around 10 Amp-hours Of Juice

March 29, 2011 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

[Punish3r] wanted to have power for prototyping on the go. What he came up with is this little thing above. Inside you’ll find common components that let the unit provide 10 amp hours of current with a 12V 500mA output.

The storage capacity is provided by a dozen Lithium batteries. These 3.7V cheapies are wired in parallel behind a protection board. For charging and discharging, a Sparkfun LiPo charger board was used, taking care of all the work necessary to top off the batteries using a wall-wort. The final piece in the puzzle is a boost converter that provides the regulated 12v connected to the red and black banana plug receivers on the bottom of the case.

This is very much a plug-and-play design… just make sure you hook the parts up correctly and you’re up and running. We would love to see a roll-your-own boost converter circuit that include a switch or dial that lets you select common PSU voltage levels. If you’re going to the trouble to make your own board you might as well incorporate the charging circuit at the same time.

[Thanks Paul]

ATX Psu Turned Into An Adjustable Voltage Bench Supply

December 9, 2010 by Mike Szczys 37 Comments

Here’s a fancy way to convert an ATX powers supply into a bench supply. [TG] didn’t just cut off the motherboard connector and add banana plugs, but improved the functionality. Right off the bat you’ll notice that he’s added a control panel. There is an Ammeter and Ohmmeter to let you know what the unit is putting out. He added an MIC29152WT adjustable voltage regulator so that he’s not limited to the fixed voltages of the psu. As a final touch he added an external voltage probe which can be used with the flick of a switch. It’s no replacement for a proper bench supply, especially since it doesn’t have adjustable current limiting, but it’s a nice improvement upon previous psu hacks.

Bench Power Supply Adapter

August 24, 2009 by Matt Schulz 14 Comments

psu_adapter

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]