EDN's Best of Power: Power Design Ideas

Long before anyone invented social Web sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, EDN's Design Ideas provided a true community for exchanging circuit designs with other electronic-design engineers.

By Staff -- EDN, 5/15/2008

Long before anyone invented social Web sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, EDN's Design Ideas provided a true community for exchanging circuit designs with other electronic-design engineers. Design Ideas are an early and valuable example of user-generated content. They are one of EDN's best-read sections and continue to provide a forum for what is the essence of a hardware designer's job. The largest category within Design Ideas is power-related designs.

• "Use a 555 timer as a switch-mode power supply"
• "Analog switch converts 555 timer into pulse-width modulator"
• "1.5V battery powers white-LED driver"
• "Triac lighting and heating controller uses few parts"
• "Build a transformerless 12- to 180V-dc/dc converter"
• "Circuit provides bidirectional, variable-speed motor control"
• "Power inverter is bidirectional"
• "Designing instrumentation circuitry with rms/dc converters"
• "Constant-current, constant-voltage converter drives white LEDs"
• "Supply derives 5 and 3.3V from USB port"

All of the Design Ideas that made this list are popular, but the Design Idea "Circuit makes simple high-voltage inverter" has been popular since its publication in 2004.