Issue 149 December 2002
Quad Bench Power Supply

---

---

Start • The Analog Core • The Zetex ZXCT1009 • An Ideal Isolator • MCU and User Interface • Firmware • Sources and PDF

I hate to admit it, but my electronics bench is not a pretty sight, at least in the midst of a project anyway. Of course, I’m always in the middle of some project that, more often than not, contains two or three different projects in various stages of completion. To make matters worse, most of my projects involve microchips, which have to be programmed. Because I use ISP flash memory MCUs exclusively, it makes sense to locate a computer on my construction bench to facilitate programming and testing. To save space, I initially used my laptop’s parallel port for MCU programming. It was only a matter of time before I popped the laptop’s printer port by connecting it to a prototype circuit with errors on it.

Fixing my laptop’s printer port would have involved replacing its main board, which is an expensive proposition. Therefore, I switched over to a desktop computer (with a $20 ISA printer port board) for programming and testing purposes. The desktop, however, took up much more room on my bench.

You can’t do without lots of testing equipment, all of which takes up more bench space. Amongst my test equipment, I have several bench power supplies, which are unfortunately large because I built them with surplus power supply assemblies taken from older, unused equipment. This seemed like a good candidate for miniaturization.

At about the same time, I read a fine article by Robert Lacoste describing a high-power tracking lab power supply ("A Tracking Lab Power Supply," Circuit Cellar 139). Although I liked many of Robert’s clever design ideas, most of my recent projects seemed to need only modest amounts of power. Therefore, I decided to design my own low-capacity bench supply that would be compact enough to fit in a small case. In this article, I’ll describe that power supply.

MY WISH LIST

Even though I mentioned that my recent project’s power demands were fairly modest, I frequently needed three or more discrete voltage levels. This meant lugging out a couple of different bench supplies and wiring all of them to the circuit I was building. If the circuit required all of the power supplies to cycle on and off simultaneously, the above arrangement was extremely inconvenient. In any event, it took up too much space on my bench.

I decided that I wanted to have four discrete voltage sources available. One power supply would be ground referenced. Two additional power supplies would be floating power supplies. Each of these would have the provision to switch either the positive or negative terminal to the negative (ground) terminal of the ground-referenced supply, allowing for positive or negative output voltage. Alternately, these supplies could be left floating with respect to ground by leaving the aforementioned switch in the center position.

This arrangement allows for one positive and two positive, negative or floating voltage outputs. To round off the complement, I added Condor’s commercial 5-V, 3-A linear power supply module, which I had on hand in my junk box. Table 1 shows the capabilities of the four power supplies.

I wanted to provide the metering of voltage and current for the three variable power supplies. The simultaneous voltage and current measurement of three completely independent power supplies seemed to indicate the need for six digital panel meters. Indeed, this is the path that Robert Lacoste used in his tracking lab supply.

I had used many of these DPM modules before, so I was aware of the fact that the modules require their negative measurement terminal to float with respect to the DPM’s own power supply. I solved this problem in the past by providing the DPM module with its own independent power source. Robert solved it by designing a differential drive circuit for the DPM. Either solution, when multiplied by six, is not trivial. Add to this the fact that high-quality DPMs cost about $40 in Canada, and you’ll see why I started to consider a different solution.

I decided to incorporate an MCU into the design to replace the six DPMs as well as six 10-turn potentiometers, which are also becoming expensive. In place of $240 worth of DPMs, I used three inexpensive dual 12-bit ADCs, an MCU, and an inexpensive LCD panel. The $100 worth of 10-turn potentiometers was replaced with three dual digital potentiometers and two inexpensive rotary encoders.

Using a microcontroller-based circuit basically allows you to control the bench supply with a computer for free. I have to admit that I decided to add the commercial 5-V supply module at the last minute; therefore, I didn’t allow for the voltage or current monitoring of this particular supply.