I know what you’re thinking…”Wow!  This guy must be really smart because he designed a switch mode power supply for his project.”  Well, I hate to disappoint, but I’m not really that smart at electronics (that’s why I’m doing this project…to learn!)

The truth is, I was looking at building my own SMPS, but it looked like a chore even considering there are some really easy to use chips like the LM2575.  Picky PCB layout problems and the fact that I don’t own an inductor of any kind, really made me think twice about trying.  Oh, I designed a SMPS in Eagle, but I have yet to try it because I came up with a…how should I put this…dumb simple, solution.  That is, simple enough I can do it and it just works.  No fussing around with it.

First, I knew that I needed something to convert from my 11.1V (call it 12V) LiPo battery down to a useful 3.3V.  Looking at typical linear voltage regulators, I could see that I would be burning up lots of my battery as heat.  In fact, a 12V to 3.3V linear regulator is only about 28% efficient.  That’s a deal breaker.  This scoreboard needs to be as efficient as possible in the power department because it could be used for hours at a time.  Incidentally, during development I was using a 5V LDO regulator and just converting from 12V to 5V caused the regulator to heat up to where it will burn you if you touch it.  I don’t want that in my scoreboard box.  The LEDs are going to be warm enough.  My other option was to look at a SMPS.

Looking up SMPS online, I found that they tend to be about 80 to 90% efficient in the voltage and current ranges that I am expecting.  That’s a HUGE improvement.  This is when I made the decision to do a SMPS or bust.  Little did I know that I actually had a SMPS lurking in my desk drawer that would do the job perfectly.  While I was pondering SMPS datasheets, I noticed a car charger from a long defunct cell phone laying on my desk.  “Hey!” I said to myself, “that thing converts from 12V car voltage to 5V USB!”  My search for a SMPS was over.

Gutting the charger, I found a small circuit with a couple resistors, a diode, an 8 pin unmarked dip, and (the tell tale sign of a SMPS), an inductor.  But this SMPS outputs 5V, not 3.3V, which is what I need.  Having done a bit of research already, I knew that the voltage on a variable SMPS chip is set with a potential divider.  So I set out to recreate the schematic of this simple board.  Soon, I had identified the two resistors that create the voltage divider, figured out which one I needed to replace, calculated the new resistor value, and replaced the resistor with an appropriate value for 3.3V output.

Honestly, I didn’t think it could be this simple, but apparently it was.  When I powered on the circuit, it measured exactly 3.295V.  Sweet!!  I had concerns that perhaps this SMPS couldn’t handle the current required for running all my electronics, but now that I have it hooked up I can see that it’s not going to be an issue.  In a steady state, my electronics (minus the digits which run on 12V anyway) take anywhere from 30 to 50mA with peaks up to 200mA.  The SMPS can handle that, no problem, if it ever charged a phone.

Here’s a pic of my repurposed SMPS.

For those of you that are impeccably observant, you may have noticed that there are two resistors connected together.  That’s just me not being able to find a 1000 ohm resistor, so I made one with two 500 ohm resistors.  Yeah, okay, it’s not that clean, but it works and I’m all about things that just work.

That’s all for now!