Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

Diodes to drop 12VDC to 5VDC

Status
Not open for further replies.

Chris_11

New Member
Hello,
I am currently working on a project in which i have a 12V 7.2AH sealed lead acid battery. From this battery i need to power a router at 12V and then a camera rated at 5V 2A.
I am considering building a circuit with about 7 or so 3A diodes to drop the voltage down to 5. I am thinking of using a fuse in there also.

I was wondering if this is a viable solution? Do you know of any better ways to approach this situation?

Thankyou :)
 
I would use a linear regulator 7805 (with heatsink) rather than a bunch of diodes, but beeing battery operated you could use a buck-converter with better than 85% efficiency to prolong battery power. E
 
Series diodes won't regulate very well at all, and a 7805 isn't going to handle 2A. Any 'linear' regulator (series diode or regulator) is going to need to dispose of 14+ watts of heat anyways, which wastes more than you use.

A switching regulator is not as simple as a 'linear', but saves a lot of power. If you use the Black regulator, pay special attention to the current rating. Most of the designs on his pages are for 300mA and less, so you have to be aware and scale your implementation to handle the 2A that you need.
 
Using a set of 2-3amp diodes will be the cheapest and although the output voltage will not be exactly 5v, you can adjust it with different types of diodes.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top