eriksl wrote:For anything above ~100 mA I'd recommend a buck converter instead of a lineair regulator. They're dead cheap now and very small as well. They generally can convert from ~30 V to ~2.5 V on 2000-3000 mA without getting quite warm, so that means they're much more efficient. Converting from 12 V to 3.3 V using a lineair regulator is like inserting a big resistor and a small transistor to handle the transients, and this big resistor is going to burn a lot of power continuously.
Can you recommend one? If possible one that is available in Europe. I was looking for an efficient regulator but wasn't able to find a small and relatively cheap one...
SOT-223 would be best but something in about the same size would be great too.
Oh and you need an extra coil for that which takes space too... kinda annoying
eriksl wrote:For anything above ~100 mA I'd recommend a buck converter instead of a lineair regulator. They're dead cheap now and very small as well. They generally can convert from ~30 V to ~2.5 V on 2000-3000 mA without getting quite warm, so that means they're much more efficient. Converting from 12 V to 3.3 V using a lineair regulator is like inserting a big resistor and a small transistor to handle the transients, and this big resistor is going to burn a lot of power continuously.
On my test bench I use a 2596-type switching regulator to step down a 10v wall wart to 5v, then a linear SOT type regulator for 5 to 3.3v.
LastSamurai wrote:...
Can you recommend one? If possible one that is available in Europe. I was looking for an efficient regulator but wasn't able to find a small and relatively cheap one...
...
Not Europe, but I just ordered some of these because they were mentioned on this board...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/310788623921?rmvSB=true