Add a User Interface with Presets to Your Power Supply

A few years ago, Elektor published a 30-V, 3-A adjustable benchtop power supply dubbed UniLab2. To keep the total outlay down, it had a rather basic user interface. The Elektor Labs project highlighted this week offers a slick user interface for the UniLab2 by adding rotary encoders and a 4-line LCD. On top of that, you get handy presets for 3.3-V, 5-V and 12-V output voltages.

The sudden death of my faithful lab power supply offered a good opportunity to try out the affordable PeakTech PSU 6225 A which has similar current specifications as my deceased PSU (5 A vs. 6 A). The small form factor of this PSU was also a point in its favour.

Buy a power supply today and it doesn’t look much different from any other piece of test gear; covered in buttons with a TFT display and the chances are you can wrap your hand around it and pick it up one-handed. That’s true of the HMC8043 three channel 100-watt bench power supply from Rohde & Schwarz I received for reviewing.

A new 3-channel 100- watt power supply — how does it stack up? Elektor Editor Jan Buiting examines the new Rohde & Schwarz’s HMC8043 benchtop power supply to see if it matches its reputation for high quality test & measurement instruments.

Bench power supplies aren’t really pieces of kit that get your pulse racing, they just sit there doing their job, in some cases giving gentle background heating to keep the lab warm in the winter and providing enough ballast to stop your bench wobbling about too much. The traditional bench top power supply always came with a sturdy handle on the top to give you a clue that inside is some serious ironwork and that this beast is going to be heavy. But that was all yesterday...

Intersil have introduced a single chip just 9 x 6.5 mm which contains just about all the control features (including the output stages) needed to build a dual 0.8 to 5 V power supply with 3 A per channel output capability. The ISL8203M can also supply 6 A in current sharing operation....

Introduction:A step-up or a boost converter circuit converts a low voltage into a higher value output voltage.

Introduction:A step-up or a boost converter circuit converts a low voltage into a higher value output voltage.

I like using solderless breadboards, except when you have to build the same circuit element for the umpteenth time—for example, a 5-V supply complete with decoupling, or a drop-in microcontroller. So I’ve made these into modules that can be plugged directly into the board. Now I only need nine wires to build a PIC voltmeter and LCD display!

A simple Platino-based lab bench power supply for not too demanding (hobbyist) applications. Inspired by the “Lab PSU for Embedded Developers”. The inconvenience of the above design is that the MCU is just a passive display; in this new design output voltage and the maximum current is controlled by the MCU.