LM317 Lithium Ion Battery Charger

Even though I have some TP4056 modules for charging Li-Ion cells, those small PCBs generate a lot of heat and the charging current decreases with temperature increase. Since I have parallel pairs of cells from notebook batteries, I would like to charge them with a higher current. Another limitation of those modules would be that the maximum charge current cannot be changed unless I replace a small SMD resistor. Therefore I'll build my own Li-Ion battery charger, with LM317 (LM338). Using a linear regulator does not solve the heat production issue, but at least I can put it on a heatsink.

Li-Ion cells need to be charged in a two-step process. First, until they reach a threshold voltage the charger behaves as a constant current supply. This current is cell-specific, but usually the supplied energy (in Ah) should be less than 80 percent of battery capacity (Ah). When the voltage increases enough, the charger should switch to constant voltage mode, maintaining a stable 4.2 V (or 4.1 V for some cells) until current drops.

Versatile LM317 power supply project

An adjustable power supply is mandatory lab equipment for those who regularly deal with electronics circuits. One of the most popular integrated circuit for linear power supplies is LM317. There are countless power supply projects using LM317. This one has some additional features. The usual output voltage of LM317 cannot be lower than 1.25 V. However this circuit uses an additional negative power supply derived from the same transformer winding. With this, you can pull output voltage down to 0 V. The PCB also contains an additional power supply, with fixed regulator. Its purpose is to supply power to a custom made panel voltage and current meter. But you can use it to power a cooling fan if you want.

LM317 Power supply built PCB

USB Power Supply for Breadboard

Breadboards are very useful for quickly building electronic circuits. But these circuits require power. The popular breadboard power supply you will find on the market is powered from more than 8 V by an AC-DC adapter. They can provide both 5V and 3.3V from linear 1117 regulators. These regulators can supply a maximum of 800mA, but because they work in linear mode and the PCB is not well built for heat dissipation, the current you can draw from such a device is very limited.

While trying to interface a gas sensor and a TV card tuner to an Arduino, I found that I had troubles powering them. Each of the mentioned devices need about 200mA. Both Arduino and the breadboard power supply use linear voltage regulators to provide 5V. I tried to use the breadboard power supply, but the regulator became hot immediately. Being fed with 12V, the 1117 regulator needed to dissipate (12 - 5) x 0.2 = 1.4 W. That's a lot for its small package.

I needed a better power supply. And I want it for breadboard projects. USB seems to be a pretty good power source, being able to provide at least 500mA. So I designed my own power supply. Since is USB powered, I thought it would be a good idea to have an USB port where I could plug development boards, without needing another computer USB port.

A better way to power car audio in home

Usually, car audio systems like CD player or cassette player have good audio amplifiers, with four channels (front L/R and rear L/R) of enough power for in home use. The radio tuner is also of high quality, with automatic best frequency selection and RDS information. Not all car audio systems have audio auxiliary inputs, although with a little tweaking, you can add audio line level inputs to a cassette player so you can use it as audio amplifier with any audio source.

There are plenty of how-to's about this subject. Yet I couldn't find one that handles the memory loss problem. Car audios are designed to be continuously powered by the battery. Therefore, most don't have a permanent storage memory for settings. Upon disconnecting the power, the device loses all audio settings and stored radio stations. This article will deal with the memory loss problem. Unless you will never unplug the DC adapter from the mains, you will need some kind of battery backup system. There are two approaches here: find and power only the CPU from battery or power the entire device from battery.

Car audio powered in home

Computer PSU start circuit with bicolor LED

There are a lot of tutorials on the internet on how to turn a computer PSU into a bench top power supply. Most of them involve adding a load on the 5V line and turning the PSU on by grounding the PS_ON wire via a switch. Here is a nice indicator and turn on/off switch for computer PSUs.

ATX PSUs work well under rather constant loads. So if you power up the PSU with a small load of a few tens miliamps and then connect a greater load, for example a car light bulb which may require 3-4 A, the PSU may shut down. The same happens in case of an accidental shortcircuit. You may believe that the PSU got broken or its fuse got blown. That's not true. The PSU automatically shut itself off.