Computing stuff tied to the physical world

Micro Power Snitch, part 4

In Book on Mar 11, 2015 at 00:01

At the end of the day, the Micro Power Snitch (MPS) is really about powering up and down robustly under all circumstances. There will be times when there is no energy coming from the Current Transformer, and there will be times when energy levels hover around the go/no-go point of the circuit. That’s the hard part: being (very) decisive at all times!

This week’s episode looks at an improved circuit with a dozen individual components or so. As you will see, it has excellent snap-action behaviour, and does the right thing on the “up” ramp as well as on the “down” ramp, regardless of how slowly those voltage levels change.

DSC 4958  Version 2

Here is the daily sequence for this week:

With a complete MPS circuit design worked out, we’re finally getting somewhere.

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