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Project Notes

#060 5V Breadboard Regulator

An LM7805 5V regulated power supply on breadboard-compatible protoboard.

Breadboard5V_build

Notes

See LM7805 5V Regulated Supply for a more detailed investigation of the 7805 voltage regulator.

The LM7805 provides regulated 5V, ideal when current requirements are moderate (up to 1A with heatsink).

This project puts a 5V regulated supply on a protoboard that is designed to plug into a standard breadboard with power rails.

It includes high and low frequency smoothing capacitors, and a master power switch and LED power indicator.

The LED indicator is provided on the regulated supply-side. The 3mm green LED has a forward voltage drop of about 2.2V, so a 1kΩ current-limiting resistor was selected to keep current draw approx 2.8mA.

Given that commercial units can be obtained for as low as 0.80USD (with free shipping!), I’m not sure if I saved any money. But it is more satisfying this way;-)

Construction

Breadboard5V_bb

Breadboard5V_schematic

Sketching a protoboard layout that would work:

Protoboard layout Build

Testing - within a few mV of 5V as expected:

Breadboard5V_test

Credits and References

About LEAP#60 Breadboard BlingPower

This page is a web-friendly rendering of my project notes shared in the LEAP GitHub repository.

Project Source on GitHub Return to the LEAP Catalog
About LEAP

LEAP is my personal collection of electronics projects - usually involving an Arduino or other microprocessor in one way or another. Some are full-blown projects, while many are trivial breadboard experiments, intended to learn and explore something interesting.

Projects are often inspired by things found wild on the net, or ideas from the many great electronics podcasts and YouTube channels. Feel free to borrow liberally, and if you spot any issues do let me know or send a pull-request.

NOTE: For a while I included various scale modelling projects here too, but I've now split them off into a new repository: check out LittleModelArt if you are looking for these projects.

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