Design of Variable Power Supply using Virtual Instrumentation

摘要

Aim of the present work is to design a variable power supply using virtual instrumentation. A variable power supply provides multiple outputs, in certain fixed steps, to cater the needs of an industry. Multiple fixed output power supplies are generally deployed to meet the power requirements of each unit in an industrial environment. In the present work, a variable power supply has been designed using digital to analog convertor, IC AD7541, microcontroller (Atmega16) and LabVIEW. The necessary circuit has been designed in our laboratory using the locally available components in the market. A GUI panel has been developed in LabVIEW to control the output of the power supply. The designed power supply has been tested and found to work satisfactorily in the range of 0 - 15V. The designed module is cost effective and provides a typical resolution of 0.003 V. Module can perform reliably with any software based on serial interface, thus, making it user friendly.