Looking for dirt cheap method DC power supply

I know what its called I just didn't catch the fact that the word reactance is not in the electro teck spell checker! I was just assuming I had spelled it wrong and took the replacement word as being right without actually looking to see that it was the correct word.
My bad, Sort of! So how many other words did it switch out since I started using it?

I thought the whole concept of spell check was to baby sit me and my bad spelling. Not that I had to baby sit it when its checking my bad spelling!

What kind of BS is this that an electronics website does not have the word reactance in its spelling dictionary?

If I keep having to add new words to the dictionary how do I know that I have spelled them right when I added them?

It just flagged all three times I used it now too!

tcmtech said:

Is this a personal project I assume?
If so you dont actually need to worry about the UL and other stuff unless it going into a production application.
As far as the size of C1 I have some 2.2 uf 200VAC rated snubber caps I have used for circuits like this that are about .250" x .500" x 1" . The three diodes and the 6.3 VDC cap take up another .250" past the .5" side.
So the total circuit is still under .250" x .750" x 1" inches.
Less total volume than a match book!

But if absolutely needed a 2.2 meg resistor in parallel to C1 and one 100K in parallel to C2 work just fine too!
I just went by your asking for the dirt cheap and simplest design request for the posted schematic!

Click to expand...

Eventually it might go to UL. What does GFCI use?

Hero999 said:

How much power do you require?

Does it need to be isolated?

What are the regulation requirements?

What about the classic Royer converter?

A couple of high voltage transistors, a ferrite core with some aditional resistors and capacitors.

It's not regulated but you can get quite a lot of power out.

Click to expand...

I will check this one. I also got that tech note a couple of posts back.

Have you ever checked the LM1851.pdf?

Space Varmint said:

OK, got most squared away. Now, let's discuss this. First of all the voltage will be only one direction. No AC.....

Click to expand...

So you're going to build a "one-direction" capacitive reactance supply??
Tantalums??

Maybe a rethink of your initial design might be in order.

Why do you need 100mA? You can get the PIC to run from 1mA, and you then need to be able to turn on the SCR which requires gate current of 2mA to 4mA depending on the type you are using. The SCR gate supply can be a short current pulse at 5vdc from a capacitor, meaning the 4mA is not continuous but a pulse of maybe 100uS duration every 8mS, so unless you have OTHER devices consuming a lot of power you should be able to do the whole thing on a budget of a couple of mA.

So now you only need a tiny cap reactance supply.