New (and compact) ZVC design.

[Diego Diaz]

Hi all,

During the last few weeks I've had email discussions with some well known contributors who consider that there is a real demand for such a device.

First, Christoph Klug and soon afterwards, Sylvain Cote and Robert Prosperi; agreed on that, despite my initial doubts about the idea.

I was wrong, and when three "heavy weights" of this small community share a common interest it's time to rethink your (my) position, and give deserved credit to them for bringing this up. :-)

After a while I had a New ZVC converter design on the drawing board (AKA: PCB design app) and the parts on their way.

Yesterday I finally got the first prototype ready. But no ZEPROM to test it with... :-(

Luckily enough, the design is so simple that it's almost impossible to get it wrong... well, I know, (Err... Murphy and all that.) and yes, the LED limiting resistor should be a bit higher. (It looks way brighter in the picture though,: but still too bright IMHO).

Pictures in the links below.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/qHhKWV33fhpeQ6e49

https://photos.app.goo.gl/TXkUSTrmWwGzfPbh8


From the technical side, it's just a DC/DC converter (the same type used in the 82120D Power Bank) configured to provide a 12v output, a switch to select RUN or PRG (PRoGram) mode and one LED to give visual feedback of the latter; all these onto a gold plated PCB of the same type as used on the PicKit2 programmer for the NoV's and Clonix modules, to improve contact reliability.

As usual, comments and questions are most welcome.

All the best from the Caribbean.

Diego.