Micro camera power supply

Digital cameras run on batteries. In fact, they eat them for breakfast, lunch and supper. When I'm shooting indoors in my work room, it often takes several minutes to set up a shot, and leaving the camera on during that time is just wasting battery power. With the Canon S1IS, turning the camera off resets some of its settings, which I would have had to store in the camera's memory. I often forgot, so there went my manual focus and zoom settings! Also the fact that I have to take the camera off of the tripod to switch batteries, causes some inconvenience. So I built this:

Micro camera power supply

Velcro on the back

A powerful voltage regulator that can be connected to a DC source (such as the notebook adapter I use for, oh, everything) that provides at least 15 watts of power, and outputs a rock solid 7.4 volts at 2 amperes maximum.

As you can see from the pictures, there's an LT1076 switching regulator on the circuit board. I chose a switching regulator, because it doesn't waste much power, and therefor doesn't heat up. As you may also have guessed from the picture: yes, that's a Frisk box. Frisk is a Belgian company that sells little mints in these boxes. I must be one of Frisk's best customers, because I think I have saved up several dozens of them. I use them to store SMDs. The third wire you see is just a daisy chain output to connect a LED ring light.

Why didn't I just buy the original mains adapter, you ask? Well, it's darn expensive! Ok, fair enough, it can be had for much less, if you look thoroughly. But where's the fun in that? This project was built out of scrap, so it cost next to nothing.

I'm stunned that I could tell so much about such a small project. It even comes with a spec sheet and a schematic!

After I upgraded from the Canon S1IS, this power supply was merged into the Cambase project.

Specifications
Dimensions Width
Depth
Height
70 mm
31 mm
10 mm
Electrical Input voltage
Input power
Input connector
Output voltage
Output current
Output connector
9-40 V, 15 V nominal
17.5 VA maximum
DC plug 5.5 x 2.1 mm, center positive
7.40 volts
2 A maximum
DC plug 3.0 x 1.1 mm, center positive

Download or view the schematic here:

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