Help! This patient is heating up! Is the voltage too low? Is the current draw too high? Is there a doctor in the house? Oh, thank goodness, the Charger Doctor is here! Right on time…Doctor, can you tell us what the current draw is? What about the voltage? Thanks to the Doctor, you will now be able to watch and care for your USB-powered projects.
Use the USB Charger Doctor to measure the working voltage and current output for any USB port and project. This blue plastic dongle plugs between a USB device, and passes the data lines through. There’s a 0.05 ohm resistor in line with the power pin that is used to measure current draw. The Doctor’s digital display instantly reads the numbers out for testing devices such as chargers, cables, and cell phones.
You can use this device from 3.5-7VDC input voltage (although most USB devices tend to hover around 4.75 to 5.25) and up to 3A of current. It flips between voltage and current readouts every 3 seconds or so. It’s a very handy tool for testing USB devices, checking load levels and debugging battery chargers and boost converters. It’s a little chunkier, but more numerical than our USB Power Gauge Mini-Kit. It’s also not open source so check out the USB Power Gauge mini kit if you want to hack together your own power gauge indicator.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: CircuitPython 9.2.1, What is DMA, PyConUS 2025 and More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
