How To Use The IR2113 Gate Driver

The IR2113 is a very capable high side + low side MOSFET gate driver IC. It only requires 3 capacitors and a diode to function properly. You can switch the high and low side independently is you like.

IR2113 capabilities

  • The IR2113 comes in both DIP and SOIC packages.
  • One high side channel. You can switch any side of a load, high, low, in the middle, its al good.
  • One low side channel. You can switch the ground side of a load.
  • Channels are independent. Also, you can use a single channel and ignore the other.
  • High side maximum voltage of 600.
  • MOSFET gate voltage between 10 and 20. Choose a MOSFET that matches this. Also, you must provide this voltage to the IR2113.
  • Can understand logic between 3.3V and 20V. Connect directly to your Arduino, Atmel or PIC. You must provide your logic voltage source to the chip so it knows what to expect.
  • Can switch ON and OFF at maximum frequency of 5Mhz. This is more than 50 times faster than an Arduino can do PWM.
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How To Program A Stand-alone Atmel Microcontroller

Programming a stand-alone Atmel microcontroller is not that difficult. As it turns out, they are already equipped with programming pins for ICSP, only the pins have to be ‘broken-out’ to a 3×2 header, or wired directly to a neighboring Arduino.

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Arduino vs solo IC

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PyDuino – A Great Tool For Remote Control Of Arduino And ESP32 devices

Combine the ease of programming on a PC with the Arduino’s capability of digital IO, or the Wi-Fi connectivity the ESP boards give us. This utility is the command and control center for your Arduino fleet.

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Status

At this point, the project just passed the proof-of-concept stage. I will now focus on adding other functions other than digitalWrite(). There is more functionality, read about it on the GitHub page.

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How Much Inductance Do I Need?

How much inductance do you need for your buck converter to function nicely? I will show you how to figure that out without using any complex math.

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Formulas?

Just in case you are still in doubt about doing the calculations, there are Greek letters involved. For me, that a personal limit I will not cross, ever. 🙂

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DIY Ideal-diode Circuit Is Great For Improving DC Converter

With a couple of transistors, we can turn a MOSFET into a diode with almost no voltage drop, making it an ideal-diode.

This is a proof of concept for using a MOSFET instead of a diode in a buck converter. This is also called an ideal diode.

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Device for testing

Basic buck converter with bottom diode replaced by a MOSFET
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Hacking A DC Converter – Control With PWM

You can buy great and cheap DC-to-DC converters on the internet. Wouldn’t it be great to control them remotely, well, it turns out we can!

Introduction

This is a follow-up of a proof of concept I made two months ago. I used an Arduino based DAC (8 bit 8 resistor) and an op-amp to create a signal that could control the output of an eBay buck converter.

This time, I will make a simpler circuit that will just accept a PWM signal in order to control the converter. That makes it much more user-friendly than the previous circuit.

I will also show you each step on the way, so you can create this yourself if you want.

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How to add dead time to PWM

There are situations where you absolutely want to avoid signals overlapping one another. This is when you get introduced to the term dead time. I will give you an example of a circuit that needs dead time and I will show you how to create it, and how it works.

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An example

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Ten ways to drive a MOSFET, with examples

These are a couple of circuits that can drive a MOSFET. Each of them has their own pros and cons, so whether or not they are useful is highly dependent of what you want to do with them.

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Low side

1. Direct drive

A low side MOSFET driven directly by two buttons.
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How to make an op-amp output PWM with duty-cycle control?

We can use a generic op-amp like the LM4562NA. We build an oscillator from the first op-amp in the IC. This produces a triangle-wave. We feed this wave into the second op-amp. We also add a controllable voltage from a potentiometer. Compare this against the triangle wave and we have PWM with a controllable duty-cycle.

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Schematic

PWM with variable duty-cycle from op-amp
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How does an op-amp work?

Op-amp is short for operational-amplifier. You can use it as a comparator, buffer a signal, or amplify a signal.

A bunch of common op-amps

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These are some op-amps I have; they are the LM358 and the LM4562. The first is a generic op-amp and the second one is designed for audio purposes. Both however, have the same pin-out and should work roughly the same in identical circuits.

The same goes for many other models and brands, but not all. So, always check the datasheet.

There are two op-amps in this IC, each with a positive and negative input terminal and an output. The positive and negative power supplies are shared by both.

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