Power Supply

Power Supply:

The input to the circuit is applied from the regulated power supply. The a.c. input i.e., 230V from the mains supply is step down by the transformer to 12V and is fed to a rectifier. The output obtained from the rectifier is a pulsating d.c voltage. So in order to get a pure d.c voltage, the output voltage from the rectifier is fed to a filter to remove any a.c components present even after rectification. Now, this voltage is given to a voltage regulator to obtain a pure constant dc voltage. The block diagram of regulated power supply is shown in the figure 3.2

Fig 3.2 components of power supply

Transformer:

Usually, DC voltages are required to operate various electronic equipment and these voltages are 5V, 9V or 12V. But these voltages cannot be obtained directly. Thus the a.c input available at the mains supply i.e., 230V is to be brought down to the required voltage level. This is done by a transformer. Thus, a step down transformer is employed to decrease the voltage to a required level.

Rectifier:

The output from the transformer is fed to the rectifier. It converts A.C. into pulsating D.C. The rectifier may be a half wave or a full wave rectifier. In this project, a bridge rectifier is used because of its merits like good stability and full wave rectification.

Filter:

Capacitive filter is used in this project. It removes the ripples from the output of rectifier and smoothens the D.C. Output received from this filter is constant until the mains voltage and load is maintained constant. However, if either of the two is varied, D.C. voltage received at this point changes. Therefore a regulator is applied at the output stage.

Voltage regulator:

            As the name itself implies, it regulates the input applied to it. A voltage regulator is an electrical regulator designed to automatically maintain a constant voltage level. In this project, power supply of 5V and 12V are required. In order to obtain these voltage levels, 7805 and 7812 voltage regulators are to be used. The first number 78 represents positive supply and the numbers 05, 12 represent the required output voltage levels