Electronics > Beginners
Need to know if this psu is good enough for a beginner
rstofer:
As a side issue, you will have more use for a fixed voltage supply than an adjustable supply. In my case, I need +5V more than anything else. Or at least I did in the old days. Today I probably need 3.3V. If I am playing with op amps, I need +-15V supplies but these don't need anywhere near 1A. The 5V probably needs an amp and 3A isn't unreasonable but 1A worth of low power Schottky (74LSxx) is a lot of chips! There is a tendency to create 3.3V on the board so many of my prototype boards take 5V or sometimes 9V. These are usually fed from a wall wart. I have a gaggle of 5V 2A wall warts.
The point is, you can build decent linear fixed output supplies for very little money and minimal effort. No, they probably won't have fancy meters but you can always use a DMM in series to measure current and you already know what the voltage is. But you can measure it. Don't overlook inexpensive DMMs for this like the Aneng 8008. This is a really nice meter for low voltage, low current work.
I got along for decades without a bench power supply. If I didn't have one I might miss some of the elegant features but an inexpensive supply doesn't have these features anyway.
Don't overlook wall warts!
spec:
--- Quote from: rstofer on November 13, 2018, 07:15:42 pm ---BTW, 3 output supplies are quite handy and 3 individual supplies don't turn the voltages on at identical times. Maybe a 3 pole switch. Leave the PS outputs on and use an external switch.
--- End quote ---
Independent supplies are much more useful and you can just add supplies as you need. They also give the best V/As for the buck. The three supplies I use are typically set to 3V3 or 5V for logic, 12V and -12V for analogue.
But other times, I use them for high power audio amplifier work, car ignition and just plain battery charging. And err, power supply design. It depends on what electronics you do. A variable supply can function as a fixed supply, but not the other way around. I doubt that you could make a fixed supply for the cost of one of the supplies I mentioned, and then there would be all the effort.
Even multiple PSUs do not switch on at precisely the same time, especially if they have different loads.
The answer, as you say, is simply to use a multi pole, high-current switch, or individual relays for each PSU, which are probably the best approach, being modular and dirt cheap. :) Although you didn't mention it, using a switch also eliminates any turn off delays too.
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