zondag 7 december 2008

More power (on voltage doubling)



The calculator uses 2 AAA batteries. However, so far all my circuits use 5V, and even the HD44780 LCD display requires 5V. Initially I decided to use 4 rechargeable AAA batteries (1.25V each, 5V total) but this was too cumbersome and heavy.

I had already used the ICL7660A to invert a voltage. This time I decided to use it to double a voltage. The circuit above comes straight from the documentation, and it works. However, as you can see, there is a diode involved, which causes the voltage to drop by 0.7V. So the 3V becomes 5.3V. Clearly there is a risk involved here: if the batteries are exceedingly fresh, they will deliver over 1.5V each and the 5.5V threshold of the PIC microcontroller could be reached. However, this has not happened yet. Also, rechargeable batteries don't work well in this configuration, because they have too little voltage to properly power the LCD display.

In the schematic the +5V is not 5V that is applied, but actually the voltage that comes out of the circuit. The battery is hooked up to the 3V input. Despite the odd configuration of the capacitors, they are correct.

A more ideal way to create the 5V is to use a bucket converter, but that will not be covered in this post.

Geen opmerkingen: