Power to the people
I have been developing a USB bench power supply over the last few months, with eventual production as the goal – this blog is my build log, my lab book. It describes my progress, design decisions and experiments. The power supply is meant to be small, inexpensive, and incredibly useful. Small enough to slip into you pocket and use on the road, at your hacker meet-up, at school. The price should be low enough to allow everyone to afford one – especially students, because they stand to gain the most. The feature set should be comprehensive enough to make it useful for professionals – this is not a toy.
In short, I am bringing power to people.
Freedom of collaboration
Developing electronics traditionally involved a mountain of equipment: a soldering iron, multimeter, oscilloscope, power supply and signal generator. Then PCs became a vital part of the system, so they joined us in the labs. But then PCs became laptops and development became mobile, allowing greater freedom of movement, and freedom of collaboration. With the arrival of the DSO-nano, oscilloscopes were similarly liberated, while cheap development boards – like the Arduino or MSP430 Lauchpad and their progeny, capes, shields, shells, wings and other extensions – made development in general more mobile.
However, if we want to move beyond the sandbox of predetermined digital hardware, mobile power becomes a challenge. A few schemes exist for tapping USB power to drive your development circuit, but none offer the same level of control in terms of voltage regulation, current limiting and isolation that traditional bench power supplies offer. And there is always the risk of frying bits of you motherboard if you make a mistake. People also use batteries, but they generally provide very little power at a fixed voltage, with no indication of current consumption. DC wall-warts are also popular, but voltages are fixed, and you need a wall socket for them.
I believe a USB power supply will make things better. This is about creating change. And reinforcing it.
Who am I?
I’m an electronic engineer, currently between a degree and a job. Occasionally I make things, other times I appreciate other people making things. I can talk about ad-hoc networks, pico-satellites, radiation, GSM, and combinations of the above. I bake bread, enjoy lasers, think about genetic algorithms and VHDL. Who are you?
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