201_ps

This project was a collaborative effort between Donald Heer, Shea McNeely, and myself to design a durable lab power supply for ECE 201 students. The board’s purpose was to provide a reliable supply with built-in protection against reverse voltage and overcurrent, while also giving students a chance to work with and study a real PCB in their labs.

My primary contributions were developing the voltage protection circuit, completing the full PCB layout, and assembling the majority of the BOM. For the protection design, I implemented a PMOS-based approach rather than a simple diode setup in order to reduce voltage drop and improve efficiency. Donald and Shea supported the project by contributing to the overall design goals and system functionality.

The end result was a rugged, student-friendly power supply board that not only improved lab reliability but also demonstrated how professional PCB design and protection techniques are applied in practice.

Testing was done on version 0. Version 1 reduces the noise of the negative voltage by enabling the boost pin. The board is fully functional, and everything is within the predicted range.