A simple Voltage Regulator

(for battery operated devices)

There are times when batteries in electronics are a pain in the butt, as they go dead at the most inconvenient times. Since a boat has a 12V battery bank and since our electronic gizmos run on a somewhat lower voltage, I thought a voltage regulator circuit was in order to have my boat battery bank run my electronics. There are a 100 voltage regulator circuits but I found that the least expensive solution was using a common 7805 fixed voltage regulator found at Radio Shack, it is possible to design a custom voltage output regulator for $2.00 which is current limited to slightly more than 1 amp. Most of the time, that's all we require.

This regulator is desirable if you have a bunch of battery operated devices which accept an external power source. You can eliminate all your batteries as you can design any voltage you like between 5-10vdc as an output.

The base Formula for modifying the cheap regulator is

V_out = V(designed)\(1 + R2/R1) + (Iq * R2)

V_out =5(1 + R2/R1) + (Iq * R2)

Where Iq = .0042 (4.2 ma) and you experiment with the values of R1 and R2

This design is inexpensive and works just fine but you do need a heat sink for the 7805.