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Where to go from here?

A project log for Low-Cost Programmable Power Supply

Chinese "LM2596 DC/DC buck converter with voltmeter" + "some wires" + "Forth" = "programmable power supply"

thomasThomas 10/22/2018 at 19:060 Comments

This project has been very quiet - to be honest about it I don't even know if the $1.50 modules available today still has a trusty STM8S003F3P6 or rather an incompatible (but a couple of cents cheaper) Nuvoton N76E003AT20 under the LED display. It's true, the STM8S003F3P6 chips are getting cheaper again, but as a buyer of "cheap gadgets" you should now be prepared to do some soldering.

However, STM8 eForth is alive and kicking, and with the code in this project, a $0.85 STM8S103F3P6 breakout board,  and a $0.50 LM2596 module a programmable power supply can be built for ver,y little money. In fact, it's possible to control several LM2596 modules with one Forth module - which should be interesting for robustness tests use cases, like the one described here.

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