Author Topic: Voltage regulator for micro amp loads  (Read 5452 times)

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Offline lkTopic starter

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Voltage regulator for micro amp loads
« on: August 01, 2011, 06:33:29 pm »
Greetings,
im building a pic12f683, light on sensor ting, and as im running it off a solar panel and a battery i would like to have the amp draw as low as possible, but now i have run into the interesting problem that i cant really figure out how to regulate the power for those small loads, the two regulators i have looked at, lm317t and lm2576, data sheet indicate that the minimum load is 10 miliamps, and my pic with voltage dividers is only drawing something like 65 micro amps at around 2.1 volts, so for now im just running the pic of a voltage divider, which im guessing will cause me problems down the road.
my input voltage is between 11.8 and 13.8.
 I did try searching digikey, but it kept not returning any results.

So could someone point me to the the regulator i should use :)

-lk
 

Offline ejeffrey

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Re: Voltage regulator for micro amp loads
« Reply #1 on: August 01, 2011, 06:45:58 pm »
Try searching for a 'micropower regulator'

I come up with the linear technology LT1020, the national semi LP2952, and the analog devices ADP1720 that all have low quiescent currents.  However, be warned: this is the sort of application where you have to really dig into the data sheet to see what the typical and worst case quiescent current is for your exact use case.  It will vary from the nominal value with the input voltage and output current.
 

Offline IanB

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Re: Voltage regulator for micro amp loads
« Reply #2 on: August 01, 2011, 07:19:48 pm »
You might get some ideas from here, concerning power management chips:



 

Offline deephaven

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Re: Voltage regulator for micro amp loads
« Reply #3 on: August 02, 2011, 07:59:07 am »
How about the ON Semi MC78LC00 series?
 

Offline mikeselectricstuff

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Re: Voltage regulator for micro amp loads
« Reply #4 on: August 02, 2011, 08:53:40 am »
There are plenty of micropower LDOs with quiescent currents of a couple of microamps. A few of my favorites are Holtek HT71xx (unusually high input range up to 24V) and Microchip MCP1700 and MCP1702 (Latter has wider input range)
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Offline eliocor

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Re: Voltage regulator for micro amp loads
« Reply #5 on: August 02, 2011, 10:54:11 am »
For low quiescent current I used the TI TPS62120 chip (some thousands used to this date).
It works really well and even its price is not too high.
 

Offline tecman

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Re: Voltage regulator for micro amp loads
« Reply #6 on: August 02, 2011, 07:03:00 pm »
For light loads like this, I use an op-amp with a reference diode.  Either inverting or non-inverting configuration (depends on what you need for output) and a couple of R's and a C or two will do it.  Low power and can be made very accurate.

paul
 

Offline lkTopic starter

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Re: Voltage regulator for micro amp loads
« Reply #7 on: August 03, 2011, 08:02:28 pm »
Thanks for all the replies with pointers, now i have something to work with :)

-lk
 


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