Episode

The Maker Show: Episode 15 - Using Voltage Regulators to Power your Projects

If you are like me, you have a box of old power supplies. Those old "Wall Warts" and "Power Bricks" from electronics that have long since been sent to that big recycling center in the sky. Wouldn't it be cool if you could use them to power your projects? Turns out you probably can. BUT you may need to convert the voltages they produce into values that match the requirements of your microcontrollers and components.

In this episode, we'll talk about "Unregulated" and "Regulated" power supplies. How to figure out what kind you have, and then how you can use Voltage Regulators, like the popular LM7805 to convert the voltages into appropriate levels for your project. Well cover all the vocab as well so at the end of this you should know the difference between Linear Regulators, Switched Regulators, Fixed Voltage and Adjustable Regulators and "Buck" and "Boost" converters.

Throughout the episode, I refer to a number of sites, products, and datasheets and I promised to share the links for them all. So, here they are:

Pull these links up in the browser for the video:

Sparkfun Unregulated Power Supply Tutorial: https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/103

Adafruit Power Supply Tutorial: https://learn.adafruit.com/power-supplies/overview

Power Supply and Voltage Regulators Video Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8gw7iuPtx6n6iejk1PfnHaQ7AkGx7F8O

Wikipedia Voltage Regulator Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltage%5Fregulator#Active%5Fregulators
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear%5Fregulator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched-mode%5Fpower%5Fsupply

Arduino Uno Related Links:

Arduino Board
https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardUno

Arduino Schematic:
https://www.arduino.cc/en/uploads/Main/Arduino%5FUno%5FRev3-schematic.pdf

NCP117 5.0V Regulator Used on Arduino Uno:
http://www.onsemi.com/pub%5Flink/Collateral/NCP1117-D.PDF

LP2985N 3.3V Regulator Used on Arduino Uno:
http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/lp2985-n.pdf

Raspberry Pi Related Links:

Raspberry Pi Power FAQs:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/faqs/#power

Raspberry Pi Reduced Schematic:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/schematics/RPI-3B-V1%5F2-SCHEMATIC-REDUCED.pdf

PAM2306 Dual Voltage Regulator used on Raspberry Pi. Steps 5V in to 3.3V and 1.8V:
http://www.mouser.com/ds/2/115/PAM2306-336770.pdf

Particle Photon Related Links:

Particle Photon Power Details:
https://docs.particle.io/datasheets/photon-datasheet/#power

Particle Photon Schematic:
https://github.com/spark/photon/blob/master/pdfs/photon%5Fv100/photon%5Fv1.0.0.pdf

Particle Photon Design Files:
https://github.com/spark/photon

Richtek RT8008-33GB Regulator used in the Particle Photon:
http://www.richtek.com/assets/product%5Ffile/RT8008/DS8008-07.pdf

Datasheets:

Adafruit 30mm LED Dots:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/1547

LM7805 Fixed Voltage Linear Regulator Datasheet:
https://www.fairchildsemi.com/datasheets/LM/LM7805.pdf

V7805-1500R Fixed Voltage Switching Regulator Datasheet:
http://www.cui.com/product/resource/v78xx-1500.pdf

LM317 Adjustable Voltage Linear Regulator:
http://www.ti.com/product/lm317

MP1584EN Adjustable Voltage Switched Regulator:
http://www.monolithicpower.com/Portals/0/Documents/Products/Documents/datasheet/MP1584%5Fr1.0.pdf