whats meant by regulated voltage

Thread Starter

nutty boy

Joined May 10, 2005
3
Hi my friends
I'm newer one on this forum,and want some tellme what's meant by regulated voltage,what's the mean idea of regulation and how can regulate the voltage.
thanks
 

Brandon

Joined Dec 14, 2004
306
In voltage, a regulate just does that. It regulates the voltage at the level it was designed for and attempts to maintain that voltage at all times barring any unforseen circumstances or bad design.

There are 2 main kinds. The Linear and the Switching. The linear is the more inefficient one. They are smaller and much easier to mount, they just waste energy. You connect these type of regulatores to a voltage higher than their specs. So a 5v reg, you would conenct to a signal say 6-8 volts. Now, the larger the difference between the 2 values, the more heat the linear regulator will disapate = more wasted energy and even possible heat issues if your dropping to much voltage.

The switching DC is a more efficient than the linear but requires much more space to implement. These regultors work off of the transformer concept. They take the DC signal, turn it into an AC signal. RUn it through a transformer, then rectify it into the new DC level. Now, the linear can ONLY go from higher to lower. But these switching, because of the transformer can go from lower to higher.

Their main use is when you need a guaranteed voltage to work from say for a micro controller, or a reference voltage off of a voltage diviers than you don't want to change as the batteries run out, etc.

Hope this have helped you out.
 
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