RE: YAPS Part Ten - The Control Stage and Initial Functional Testing

three-phase — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 20:25:42 GMT

The project is coming along really nice. The boards look professional and that display looks great and the functionality looks to be up to your expectations, which is always great to see.

Kind regards.

RE: YAPS Part Ten - The Control Stage and Initial Functional Testing

shabaz — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 03:56:24 GMT

Hi Andrew,

The project is looking really great! It is nice to see a modern take on a power supply project. The usability seems awesome - awesome to see the multiturn controls - better than having to push up/down to set a voltage - and with a rich graphic display that responds quickly. Also your build quality/wiring of the prototype is really nice to see.

The heatsinks will likely need replacing with much larger ones, once you're testing for longer periods.

For a power supply project (which never made it beyond some initial brainstorming, it's been on the back-burner for years : ( I was going to use this 100x100mm heatsink100x100mm heatsink and was going to have a hole in the PCB so that the similar-style package could be mounted horizontally instead of vertically, bolted onto the heatsink, and legs soldered onto the PCB of course. It's just an idea, but could be quite feasible since even large PCBs are quite cheap now.

Also, it's a very interesting part you're using for the voltage/current measurement. You could even (as a phase 2 perhaps) code the arduino to read it and plot the current consumption over time. The lower-half of the display (which is showing temperatures etc) could be removed (since it is more for debugging I guess) and replaced with a continuous updating chart. Even if it updates once a second, it could be handy since you'll end up with several minutes on the x-axis due to the number of pixels, which is useful when you occasionally glance at the display to see what your project was consuming). I tried something like that here in case it gives ideas: Building a Logging-Capable Power Supply it did work, but my project is quite limited (this design wasn't originally intended to be a power supply, and the design only goes to 5V). It doesn't even have any user controls : ) just a CLI.

Anyway, the progress is incredible, the chart is just a feature-add idea in software, if you get bored and want to add to your pile of work : )