design
ideas
Circuit combines power supply and audio amplifier
Susanne Nell, Breitenfurt, Austria
he circuit in Figure 1 can help if
T
110 OR 220V AC
MAIN SUPPLY
you must transfer dc power and au- 36V DC
1 BRIDGE 24V DC
dio over a pair of copper wires. One IC1 470 F
2 +4
application for such a circuit is a low-cost 1 VIN LM317
VOUT
2 +
+ C1
door-opening system with speech input. T2 ADJ
15 F
1
TRANSFORMER LOAD 2
The circuit uses only one IC, the well- 3
+
680 F 150
known LM317, a low-cost power- 2 LOUDSPEAKER
Figure 1 1
supply regulator. Using this chip,
RP WM34
you can modulate the adjustment-pin in- 100k ELECTRET
put with the audio signal from an electret MICROPHONE
condenser microphone, connected be-
tween the output and the adjustment ter- A novel circuit uses the adjustment pin of a regulator IC to provide audio amplification.
minals of the IC. The LM317 regulates
the output in such a way that the voltage must follow the voltage on RP, you obtain the microphone signal. For proper oper-
on the microphone is always 1.25V dc. a low-impedance audio signal riding on ation, the LM317 needs to deliver a min-
This application uses a WM34 electret the output dc voltage. imum current of 4 mA from its output
microphone, which comes in a standard The microphone directly modulates terminal. If your design uses no loud-
10-mm capsule from Panasonic and is the adjustment pin, so a smoothing ca- speaker, you can connect a load resistor
common in low-cost equipment. You can pacitor, such as C1, for noise and hum to sink this 4 mA. Designs using low-im-
use nearly any electret capsule, because does not influence the level of the audio pedance loudspeakers must also have
the well-regulated voltage on the micro- signal. C1 shunts some of the audio sig- load resistors. You must add the ac cur-
phone never exceeds 1.25V. Every electret nal to ground, but the LM317 compen- rent in the audio signal to the minimum
capsule contains an integrated JFET- sates for the loss with internal gain. To current requirement of 4 mA. For an 8
based impedance converter that trans- avoid excessive losses in the LM317, use loudspeaker, you need a minimum resis-
lates speech into a current flowing from a capacitor with as low a value as possi- tive load of 470 to avoid distortion.
the source to the drain terminal. This ble. The circuit works well without a ca-
current through the microphone modu- pacitor, but values as high as 47 F do not
lates the voltage on the variable resistor, present a problem. Using RP, you can ad- Is this the best Design Idea in this
R . Because the output of the LM317 just the dc output voltage and the gain for issue? Vote at www.ednmag.com.
P
Supply derives 5 and 3.3V from USB port
Chad Olson, Maxim Integrated Products, Sunnyvale, CA
he circuit in Figure 1 derives its high or low configures the chip for charg- ing the low-battery output, LBO, to shut-
T power from a USB port and produces
5 and 3.3V supply rails for portable
devices, such as digital cameras, MP3
ing a 4.2 or 4.1V battery, respectively. To
protect the battery, IC1’s final charging
voltage has 0.5% accuracy. The CHG ter-
down, SHDN, causes IC2 to disconnect its
load in response to a low battery voltage.
The internal source impedance of a lithi-
players, and PDAs. The circuit allows the minal allows the chip to illuminate an um-ion battery makes IC2 susceptible to
port to maintain communications while, LED during charging. oscillation when its low-battery-detec-
for example, charging a lithium-ion bat- IC2 is a step-up dc/dc converter that tion circuitry disconnects a low-voltage
tery. IC2 boosts the battery voltage, VBATT, boosts VBATT to 5V and delivers currents battery from its load. As the voltage drop
to 5V, and IC3 buck-regulates that 5V as high as 450 mA. Its low-battery detec- across the battery’s internal resistance
output down to 3.3V. IC1, a lithium-ion tion circuitry and true shutdown capa- disappears, the battery voltage increases
battery charger, draws power from the bility protect the lithium-ion battery. By and turns IC2 back on. For example, a
USB port to charge the battery. Pulling its disconnecting the battery from the out- lithium-ion battery with 500-m inter-
SELI terminal low sets the charging cur- put, “true shutdown” limits battery cur- nal resistance, sourcing 500 mA, has a
rent to 100 mA for low-power USB ports, rent to less than 2 A. An external resis- 250-mV drop across its internal resist-
and pulling SELI high sets 500 mA for tive divider between VBATT and ground ance. When IC2’s circuitry disconnects
high-power ports. Similarly, pulling SELV sets the low-battery trip point. Connect- the load, forcing the battery current to
62 edn | December 20, 2001 www.ednmag.com
