Rail-splitting a wall wart

Phil Hobbs · 2023-02-03T19:55:32+00:00

So we keep being asked for simple TIAs as incidental parts of our consulting work. They're useful to have around anyway.It's a pain getting them to work right if we put SMPSes inside, so we're kicking around the idea of using a rail splitter on our usual 24V wall warts to make +15/-9 or something like that. We'd probably use a TCA0372 and a couple of big caps for the job.Two-wire warts are isolated, of course, so as long as no bright spark decides to try running our box on the same wart as somebody else's, we should be fine, I think, but we haven't done it before.Suggestions?CheersPhil Hobbs

Feb 03, 2023 Last reply: 2 years ago 83 Replies

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Phil Hobbs 3 years ago

We just got the first batch of ten rail splitter boards in from JLCPCB.

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They work great--if you short either side of the wart to ground, the FETs open up and latch that way until you cycle the power. It's also polarity-protected, of course.

These ones get clamped to a metal baseplate with a thermal gap pad to cool the TCA0372.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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