Electronics All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 2

Building Power Supplies

IN THIS CHAPTER

Looking at how power supplies work

Stepping down the voltage

Converting AC to DC

Filtering wavy DC

Making the voltage level more reliable through regulation

With very few exceptions, every electronic circuit requires a power supply of some sort. Although some projects run off of solar power or more exotic power sources such as wind turbines, fuel cells, or nuclear reactors, most of the projects you build will get their power from one of two sources: batteries or an electrical outlet.

So far in this book, I assume that all circuits get their power from batteries. In this chapter, you look at how you can get power from an electrical outlet instead. Electrical outlets have a compelling advantage over batteries: Unless there’s a power outage, electrical outlets don’t go dead like batteries do. However, electrical outlets have an equally compelling disadvantage over batteries: Unless you use really long extension cords, you can’t take ...