As I’m doing a lot of prototyping at the moment, I’m also doing a lot of testing and my spare cases are full of prototypes, so testing new builds is becoming problematic. I’ve been using one of my spare cases to power modules up for testing, but that’s no longer an option (well it is, but it’s a massive PITA!). What I need is a bench supply.
So, Frequency Central to the rescue again!
I picked up a PCB for the FC Power unit and scraped together most of the bits from my spares box.
I made a little base for it and stuck on the inlet with gorilla glue.
I only had little heatsinks but I’ll only be powering one module at a time from it, so should be ok for now – I’ll order in some bigger ones anyway.
I’d love to say it worked first time, but I was chatting to my son while I soldered the voltage regulators, lost focus and got them the wrong way round. I realised what I’d done as soon as I tested the voltages and luckily I had spares so I just clipped them out and replaced them. Now working perfectly! It’s going to make testing and debugging much more convenient.