Boost circuits are an awesome way to power microcontrollers. Instead of 4AA batteries or a 9V (usually regulated down to 5V or 3. 3V), you just boost one or two AA`s up to your desired voltage. The only problems are that boost ICs (like these two ) are a little expensive once you decide to make more than 2 or 3 of something, and the cheaper ones ar
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e hard to find in packages that can be hand soldered easily. I stumbled upon one great solution here use PWM from a microcontroller. And Atmel recently introduced the ATtiny43U with a built-in boost converter hopefully this will become a trend and all microcontrollers will come with built-in boost converters, the same way they (mostly) all support serial, I2C, and SPI. But in the meantime I wondered if a simpler solution might be possible, a boost converter using a 555 timer. The 555 timer is a very common $0. 20 chip that can generate a PWM at a given frequency and duty cycle based on the charge time of some chosen resistors and a capacitor. The circuit would need the same basic external components as a boost converter (inductor, diode, capacitor), but it would be a lot cheaper. It wouldn`t be able to regulate the voltage, only multiply it using a calculated duty cycle, so the solution already starts off a bit limited since the voltage of a AA battery varies over it`s lifetime. But despite this limitation, there are definitely applications where providing roughly 5V from a single AA or AAA is very useful (powering servos in a kite aerial photography rig, for example) Wikipedia has a great explanation of how a boost converter works. The basic idea is that the source voltage is run through an inductor and alternately connected to ground through the transistor and disconnected so that it will charge the capacitor. The ratio...
This project fits more for custom made battery casing that can have more space to hide things inside. This switch with few alterations can be used for any other project as well but is designed based on e-bike needs! This project use a clever functionality of....
The circuit described here uses ultrasonic oscillations and operates based on the propagation velocity of these oscillations in the air. Thus, we can easily determine the distance of two points if the time within which the wave travels this distance is....
Sometimes the precious metals are hidden too deep and are not detected except with complicated devices. In many cases, however, small pieces of precious metal buried near the surface can be detected by relatively simple means. Everyone is very attractive to....
Many times for various reasons we forget or can not water the plants that we have in our homes. And many humidity sensors units just notify us with a beeping sound or with a flashing light, that the pot needs watering. But what if we are away from home? This....
The principle behind a metal detector is really very simple. Proof of this is the circuit that follows, in which it proves that the construction of a metal detector can be done in the minute, with few components that we find very easily everywhere. With the....
The sub-harmonic bass generator is a sound producing unit for guitars. The sound it produces looks very much like that of the bass guitar. The octave generator is sometimes quite unusual since it does not produce any of the usual ways of coloring the sound,....
In the past the sounding (sea bottom measurement) was done with the "bullet", that is, with a heavy lead object that the seamen plucked into the sea hung from a calibrated rope. As soon as the "bullet" reached the bottom, the depth appeared directly from the....
This Amplifier was designed to have the following specifications: Distortion less than 0.1% at full power of 100W even at 20KHz. Power has to be attributed to an extended bandwidth. The output transistors must be protected against short circuits. The power....
A series of LEDs serve to alert the gardener when plants need water. Using two conventional digital integrated LEDs and a series of LEDs, we make a very useful device for gardening. The device detects the amount of water in the pot and alerts the grower.....
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