Friday, January 10, 2014
Solar Charger Circuit Project Using Transistors
Monday, May 13, 2013
7 segment rolling display using PC
It is very interesting and convenient to be able to control everything while sitting at your PC terminal. Here, a simple hardware circuit and software is used to interface a 7-segment based rolling display. The printer port of a PC provides a set of points with some acting as input lines and some others as output lines.
Some lines are open collector type which can be used as input lines. The circuit given here can be used for interfacing with any type of PC’s printer port. The 25-pin parallel port connector at the back of a PC is a combination of three ports. The address varies from 378H-37AH. The 7 lines of port 378H (pins 2 through 8) are used in this circuit to output the code for segment display through IC1. The remaining one line of port 378H (pin 9) and four lines of port 37AH (pins 1, 14, 16, 17) are used to enable the display digits (one a time) through IC2. The bits D0, D1 and D3 of port 37AH connected to pins 1, 14 and 17 of ‘D’ connector are inverted by the computer before application to the pins while data bit D2 is not inverted. Therefore to get a logic high at any of former three pins, we must send logic 0 output to the corresponding pin of port 37AH.
Another important concept illustrated by the project is the time division multiplexing. Note that all the five 7-segment displays share a common data bus. The PC places the 7-segment code for the first digit/character on the data bus and enables only the first 7-segment display. After delay of a few milliseconds, the 7-segment code for the digit/character is replaced by that of the next charter/digit, but this time only second display digit is enabled. After the display of all characters/digits in this way, the cycle repeats itself over and over again. Because of this repetition at a fairly high rate, there is an illusion that all the digits/characters are continuously being displayed. DISP1 is to be physically placed as the least significant digit. IC1 (74LS244) is an octal buffer which is primarily used to increase the driving capability. It has two groups of four buffers with non-inverted tri-state outputs.
The buffer is controlled by two active low enable lines. IC2 (75492) can drive a maximum of six 7-segment displays. (For driving up to seven common-cathode displays one may use ULN2003 described elsewhere in this section.) The program for rolling display is given in the listing DISP.C above. Whatever the message/characters to be displayed (here five characters have been displayed), these are separated and stored in an array. Then these are decoded. Decoding software is very simple. Just replace the desired character with the binary equivalent of the display code. The display code is a byte that has the appropriate bits turned on. For example, to display character ‘L’, the segments to be turned on are f, e and d. This is equivalent to 111000 binary or 38 hex. Please note that only limited characters can be formed using 7-segment display. Characters such as M, N and K cannot be formed properly
Monday, April 8, 2013
Battery Charger Display Using LT1639
The current source formed by IC1a and T1 is active when the batteries are discharging and IC1b and T2 is active when the batteries are being charged. In each case the inactive opamp will have 0V at its output and the corresponding transistor will be switched off. IC1d amplifies the voltage across R5, which is proportional to the sense current. The component values given in the diagram produce an amplification factor or 10. A sense current of 0.1 A will produce an output voltage of +1 V. The supply voltage to the circuit is +5 V so this will be the maximum value that the output can achieve. This corresponds to a maximum charge/discharge current of 0.5 A To display currents from 0 to 5.0 A, resistor R7 can be omitted to give IC1d a voltage gain of 1.Higher currents can be displayed by using a lower value of sense resistor R8. A DVM or analogue meter can be used at Vout to give a display of the charge/discharge current. The constant current sources can only function correctly when the supply to the voltage regulator circuit (UBatt. e.g. 6V or 12V) is greater than the operating voltage of the opamps (+5 V). The supply voltage to the LT1639 can be in the range of +3 V and +44V and voltages up to 40V over the supply voltage are acceptable at the inputs to the opamp. IC1c controls the charging/discharging LED output. The inputs to this opamp are connected to the outputs of the current source opamps and its output goes high when the battery is being charged and low when it is discharging.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Flip Flop Using CMOS NAND Gates
Using just two NAND or inverter gates its possible to build a D type (or ‘toggle’) flip-flop with a push-button input. At power-up the output of gate N2 is at a logical ‘1’, ensuring that transistor T2 is switched off. When the push-button is pressed the output of N2 changes to a logical ‘0’ and transistor T2 conducts. The coupling between N1 and N2 ensures that the output of N1 will always be the inverse of N2 so T1 and T2 will always be in opposite states and will flip each time the push-button is pressed. In some cases it is possible to omit T1 and T2 and use the outputs of N2 and N1 to drive external circuitry directly but only if the loading on these outputs is low enough.
The 4000 series CMOS family can source/sink a maximum of 0.5mA (at 5 V) so for the sake of safety its best to use these open-collector configured transistor buffers. This circuit is particularly useful if you have some unused gates left over in a circuit design, avoiding the need to add a dedicated flip-flop IC. It is worth remembering that all other unused CMOS gates must have their inputs connected to either the positive or ground rail. The supply voltage can be in the range 3 V to 15 V for CMOS ICs and the current taken by this circuit is between 0.2 mA and 5 mA (no load).
Source : www.extremecircuits.net
How to Make Simple Low Battery Voltage Indicator Using IC 741
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Under Voltage Lockout for Buck Circuit Using LM2575

In some applications it is desirable to keep the regulator off until the input voltage reaches a certain threshold. These circuits keep the regulator off until the input voltage reaches a predetermined level.
VTH ≈ VZ1 + 2VBE (Q1)