Tag: martin lorton

A beefy electronic load (#P4F1)

Well, that was a long week…actually, it was a fortnight ;)

Here we go!

(the alignment of images really sucks when placed near the header of the post – thanks WordPress!)

So this puppy was manufactured by my new friends over at OSH Park (ordinary order, no extras) and I think I hit the express jackpot. I registered on June 8th and submitted my files – three hours later (1 AM my time on Friday) I already got notice of the panel assignment. Maybe the small size of 54mm x 31mm (2.1″ by 1.2″ for the Yankees out there) just made a perfect fit on the remaining board size and they sent it straight to production ;) As OSH Park charges 5 dollars per square inch of board area (for three units!), […]


A beefy electronic load (#P4)

This is a ranty introduction to the electronic load project – photos, circuits and more will be available in part 2 next week!

So…I’ve been torturing power supplies (and to a lesser extend: batteries) for ages. Usually to check their health status by comparing the current peak performance to the claimed values in the datasheet. Once you see voltage rails dropping where they should not, it’s time for a replacement of the unit, or in case of specialized PSUs, for a swap of the electrolytic caps.

But the crudity of my testing always bothered me – hooking up power resistors, measuring voltage and current, manually connecting and disconnecting the DUT, never hitting exact performance figures because of the limited selection of torture devices I had around. […]