Even today much logic is still powered from 5 volts and it then seems obvious to power the circuit using a standard regu-lator from a rectangular 9-V battery. A disadvantage
of this approach is that the capacity of a 9-V battery is rather low and the price is rather high. Even the NiMH revolution, which has resulted in considerably higher capacities of (penlight) batteries, seems to have escaped the 9-V battery generation. It would be cheaper if 5 volts could be derived from 6 volts, for example. That would be 4 ‘normal’ cells or 5 NiMHcells. Also the ‘old fashioned’ sealed leadacid battery would be appropriate, or two lithium cells. Using an LP2951, such a power supply is easily realised. The LP2951 is an evergreen from National Semiconductor, which you will have encountered in numerous Elektor Electronics designs already.
This IC can deliver a maximum current of 100 mA at an input voltage of greater than 5.4 V. In addition to this particular version, there are also versions available for 3.3 and 3 V output, as well as an adjustable version. In this design we have added a battery indicator, which also protects the battery from too deep a discharge. As soon as the IC has a problem with too low an input voltage, the ERROR output will go low and the regulator is turned off via IC2d, until a manual restart is provided with the RESET-pushbutton.
The battery voltage is divided with a few resistors and compared with the reference voltage (1.23 V) of the regulator IC. To adapt the indicator for different voltages you only need to change the 100-k resistor. The comparator is an LP339. This is an energy-friendly version of the LM339. The LP339 consumes only 60 μA and can sink 30 mA at its output. You can also use the LM339, if you happen to have one around, but the current consumption in that case is 14 times higher (which, for that matter, is still less than 1 mA). Finally, the LP2951 in the idle state, consumes about 100 μA and depending on the output current to be delivered, a little more. (054011-1) (National Semiconductor application note)
