So Where’s My Low Voltage DC Wall Socket?

December 21, 2016 by Jenny List 185 Comments

What are the evocative sounds and smells of your childhood? The sensations that you didn’t notice at the time but which take you back immediately? For me one of them is the slight smell of phenolic resin from an older piece of consumer electronics that has warmed up; it immediately has me sitting cross-legged on our living room carpet, circa 1975.

"Get ready for a life that smells of hot plastic, son!" John Atherton [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons. — “Get ready for a life that smells of hot plastic, son!” John Atherton [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

That phenolic smell has gone from our modern electronics, not only because modern enclosures are made from ABS and other more modern plastics, but because the electronics they contain no longer get so hot. Our LCD TV for instance nowadays uses only 50 watts, while its 1970s CRT predecessor would have used several hundred. Before the 1970s you would not find many household appliances that used less than 100 watts, but if you take stock of modern electrical appliances, few use more than that. Outside the white goods in your kitchen and any electric heaters or hair dryers you may own, your appliances today are low-powered. Even your lighting is rapidly being taken over by LEDs, which are at their heart low-voltage devices.

There are many small technological advancements that have contributed to this change over the decades. Switch-mode power supplies, LCD displays, large-scale integration, class D audio and of course the demise of the thermionic tube, to name but a few. The result is often that the appliance itself runs from a low voltage. Where once you would have had a pile of mains plugs competing for your sockets, now you will have an equivalent pile of wall-wart power supplies. Even those appliances with a mains cord will probably still contain a switch-mode power supply inside.

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Ask Hackaday: Dude, Where’s My MOSFET?

December 13, 2016 by Elliot Williams 126 Comments

(Bipolar Junction) Transistors versus MOSFETs: both have their obvious niches. FETs are great for relatively high power applications because they have such a low on-resistance, but transistors are often easier to drive from low voltage microcontrollers because all they require is a current. It’s uncanny, though, how often we find ourselves in the middle between these extremes. What we’d really love is a part that has the virtues of both.

The ask in today’s Ask Hackaday is for your favorite part that fills a particular gap: a MOSFET device that’s able to move a handful of amps of low-voltage current without losing too much to heat, that is still drivable from a 3.3 V microcontroller, with bonus points for PWM ability at a frequency above human hearing. Imagine driving a moderately robust small DC robot motor forwards with a microcontroller, all running on a LiPo — a simple application that doesn’t need a full motor driver IC, but requires a high-efficiency, moderate current, and low-voltage-logic compatible transistor. If you’ve been here and done that, what did you use?

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Smart Low Voltage Lighting

July 25, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 14 Comments

A common theme around Internet of Things things is connecting a relay to the web. It’s useful for everything from turning on a lamp from across the country to making sure your refrigerator is still running without the twice-hourly calls from the International Refrigeration Commission. For his Hackaday Prize project, [Matt] is turning lights on and off with an ESP8266 WiFi module, but not just any lights: he’s focusing on low-voltage lighting with the ESPLux.

Most downlights and landscape lights run off a 12 or 24 V transformer, and because [Matt] wanted to add dimming to his lighting box, he’s rectifying the low voltage AC to DC; PWMing an output to light an LED is a much better idea than chopping AC with a triac.

With a rectifier, MOSFET, and an ESP8266, the ESPLux is a simple build, but the project doesn’t end with electronics. for automation and control of these lights, [Matt] is turning to OpenHAB, automation software that works with everything you would ever use to make your home smart.