Welcome to this page on how to build your own simple Voltage regulator for 5 Volts or 12 volts.

Now if you would like to see the above devises working then visit my You Tube page here.

1). On this page we will be looking at why you may want to build your own fixed voltage regulated power supply for a fixed voltage.

2). The benefits of voltage regulators is that you may want to build some electronic circuits and you need a fixed supply of 5 volts or 12 volts using a simple regulator is a good idea.

3). The difference between regulated and unregulated is say you have a circuit that needs to be powered from 9 or 12 volts with a out put of 5 volts with a regulated power supply it will be 5 volts fixed out put.
 
4). Now with a unregulated power supply say you need a 9 or 12 volt supply and your circuit needs 5 volts out put with a unregulated power supply even so you set the dial, on the power supply to 5 volts it is often more than this and if you use IC Chips most have a max of 6 volts if the voltage on the out put to your circuit is 7 volts then this will destroy your circuits Micro chips.
 
5). One way you could look at regulated and unregulated is like this Regulated is stable with no higher voltages on the line.
 
6). The way you could look at Unregulated is that it is not stable and it can give higher voltages that you don't want in most cases Digital electronics needs 5 volts this is very common so we build the regulator circuit in to our design or the designer may say use a regulated power supply.
 
7). You may say some thing like use a regulated power adapter the designer of the circuit may have not built a regulator in to his design to save cost.
 
8). Designs that can use unregulated power supplies are often analog electronics, analog electronics is often things that don't use micro chips so the voltage does not need to be regulated.

9 ). Now most people may have come across Voltage regulators in power adapters or bench power supplies the regulator is used often in electronic designs to supply a fixed voltage to a circuit.

10 ). Now say your project tells you to use 9 or 12 volts input most electronic designs that have regulators will drop the voltage to a fixed level.

11 ). The simple design below can be used with any 5 volt or 12 volt input devise or you could use it in your own electronic designs.

12 ). The parts are off the shelf parts so you should have know problem getting them on Ebay or your local electronic shops or stores.

Please note if you have any problems then I am happy to help just send me a e-mail: Anthony@anthony-dacko.net

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