AA Powered Microcontrollers


[sprite_tm] sent in this nice little single AA battery micro-controller power hack. He’s using the uc to generate a PWM signal for a simple voltage step up circuit – the catch is that the controller has to start working before it can generate the signal. He came up with a nice little solution to this caveat – a push button start that gets things rolling once the coil charges up.

Thanks for the tips guys, keep em comin.

4 thoughts on “AA Powered Microcontrollers

  1. Not bad, but I think I’d have gone for the gusto and used a cap or RC between the coil and the FET gate… power on, cap is a short as it charges, which turns on the FET and bootstraps the chip… He’s right though… not bad.

  2. hehe.. i had an idea for a miniature intelligent solar garden lamp with PIR proximity sensor, but the main sticking point was power.

    charging a single high capacity NiMH AA cell is fairly easy. Also, a simple Schmitt trigger should be enough to generate the very brief pulse train to get things started when the light starts to fade.

    as for low power, use a pic 12f675 in 32k mode, it draws under a milliamp when asleep.

    -A

Leave a Reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.