Purpose of L1 and C5?

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
It appears to be a simple LC power line filter. It is going to the Vdd power connection from the 3.3VDC power input. For anyone having trouble finding it it is on the lower right hand side of the schematic.
 

Thread Starter

spinnaker

Joined Oct 29, 2009
7,830
It appears to be a simple LC power line filter. It is going to the Vdd power connection from the 3.3VDC power input. For anyone having trouble finding it it is on the lower right hand side of the schematic.
Why would the SD need a filter if the pic does not? I have seen this configuration with other SD projects too.


Maybe this explains it?

http://elm-chan.org/docs/mmc/mmc_e.html

Near the bottom of the page. It prevents a surge current. I was kind of close if this article is right.
 

JMac3108

Joined Aug 16, 2010
348
C5 is a bulk storage capacitor for the SD card. Its standard practice to put a bulk cap, usually tantalum or electrolytic, on external devices or interfaces. The capacitor stores energy locally so that it can provide it to the load, in this case an SD card, during high currrent draw conditions without having to draw currnent through the PCB traces which could possible cause a voltage dip at the SD card. Good design practice says you should also have a smaller ceramic bypass cap in parallel with the bulk cap.

The inductor is just there to filter the power. Perhaps the 3.3V power supply is noisy and needs extra filtering for the SD card. Perhaps the designer was just being cautious.
 

thatoneguy

Joined Feb 19, 2009
6,359
Reading/writing SD Cards takes a lot of power, relatively, I suspect those components are there to keep the supply voltage from dropping out at a critical moment.

I'll have to dig out a datasheet, but I know a standard fullsize 2GB / "old style" SD Card gets quite warm to the touch when writing 1GB of files to it. I don't think the new SDHC micro cards are as power hungry, but the early SD cards were.

--ETA: 65mA read and 75mA write, that has come down a bit since 2003, well, a lot.
 
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