I have attached a zip file for my latest design, done in 6.0. The idea is to take power from a leftover notebook power adapter and produce a lab power supply with variable output voltage and some degree of current limiting. I have components in hand and boards en route from JLCPCB. I did not ask them to build it because many of the parts have been laying around in my lab, and having them build it means the design must be done around what they have.
Beyond my own boards, I was pondering what else to do with it. The design is heavily biased around skill and components that I have, and the fact that JLCPCB has a particularly good price for a board that is 100 x 100 mm or smaller.
Power is my area; but the digital realm not so much. The control is based on a dual digipot (coarse and fine voltage) controlled by a couple of inexpensive mechanical shaft encoders. I would have used a DAC if I thought I could figure out how to control it. And a digital readout might be nice but this has only the duty cycle of blinking LEDs as a relative indication of where the digipots are in their range.
EDIT: I have cheap commercial lab supplies on my lab bench. My complaint about them is due to the cheap mechanical potentiometers. The output voltage on those cheap commercial units tends to wander in a noisy way due to the potentiometers. That was one reason to try the Digipots.
The power converter is a single or doubled-output SEPIC converter targeted to operate at 300 KHz. I targeted output up to 30W. Depending upon configuration, the output voltage range should be from down to a few volts and up to about 60V.
So there is a lot which could be added or changed if the interest + skill is there. I will be happy to contribute to redesign.
Is there any interest? I am wondering: Does anyone want to contribute design expertise/ideas and get the board design in return (presumably to build a few)? If not, I will climb back into my hole. Wait…I guess I have not stayed put there very well anyway.
Digipot SEPIC 12-11-2021b.zip (519.8 KB)