Saturday, October 20, 2012

230V AC TO 5V DC

In this post, I have explained how to build good rectifier circuit to convert 230V AC(This depends on your regional distribution voltage. Eg: 120V in US) power supply into 5V DC power supply. This type of circuit is essential for electrical students when they have to design circuits with microcontrollers and other 5V power supply(VCC) required ICs. This is the circuit diagram.

Lets go from left to right of the circuit. Here I have used 230V to 9V transformer. It has a 300ma rated current. In micrtocontroller based projects we do not need 300ma. But these are the commonly available transformers in the market. Follow my post to get more detail about selecting a suitable transformer. 

Then common full rectifier circuit with four 1N4002 diodes. I think that i do not need to explain how does this bridge work. 

470uF capacitor has been connected between the output terminals of the bridge. This capacitor is very important. Without this, there is a significant change in power output. It increases the supply voltage to the rectifier and make smooth the waveform. If you connect a LED to a microcontroller pin and supply power without this cap most possibly you will see flickers.Other caps also do the same work.

Finally about the regulator. Regulators are designed to supply required voltage without fluctuations. That means we do not need to use regulators with DC power supply. But most of us use these regulators. Why? We use them to reduce the voltage to a desired value. Here we have used AC supply and the regulator does both of those things. It supplies a constant voltage and reduces 9V to 5V.

This is a good time to explain how select a regulator from the market for this type of project. Normally last digits of the regulator indicates the out put voltage. Eg: 7805 : 5V, 7806 : 6V, 7809 : 9V. Regulators with wide range of voltages available in the market. Normally input voltage should be 2V graeter than the output voltage. If you need to regulate negative voltage you can use 79XX series.  

6 comments:

  1. Good work..! I think its useful for all electrical students for their projects. So pls add your new ideas more and more.

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  2. If you dont mind could you please explain, transformer , bridge rectifier, filter, and regulator works. please sir, it will be helpful for me.

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  3. all were doing with the same above circuit.. can u post a different circuit for the same constant 5 v dc

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  4. also i have a query.. in above circuit u have used 230-9v tranformer,designed a circut to lose 4v and making 5v know... instead why cant we use 230/6-0-6 centre tapped transformer,considering 6v as transformer output, what will be circuit to lose that 1v alone and making constant 5v

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    Replies
    1. For 7805 regulator 7.3 V is the minimum input voltage. There for we cant supply 6 V to it.

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  5. Why exactly do we need capacitors in the above circuit other than 470uF

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