One day every geek finishes something every other geek finished too: Hack a Mint Tin.
Here is a voltage regulator that is hacked into a Mint Tin. In goes 12V, out comes 12V and 5V.
The electronics with the used components and theory behind is described here. One difference is that this application here has no capacitors.
This Something Else applies this theory and puts it into practice.
The Making
After I emptied this little mint tin it landed in the tinker box of my boys.
Since then it has been used for several things the kids needed it for: it was a boat, a wheel, a puck,
a wallet and something two boys can throw against each other.
Now this tin got hacked from me and transformed into something else.
The components got layed out to find out how they match into the tin.
For the VIN and outs for GND, 12V and 5V some holes had to be cut out.
So that the components fit.
Then the GND, 12V and 6V with the voltage regulator got wired and soldered. The
heat-sink of the voltage regulator touches the base of the tin and has contact so that
heat can conduct into it.
After all got wired the smoke-test was successful.
So the shrinktubes got heated up and finalized the making. Putting all into this
little mint tin needed some time to figure out. Especially the fuse is quite bulky
for this application...
The yellow cable is the 5V powerline.
So if you open up the mint tin this is how it looks inside:
Here you see the input and outputs.
On one side there is five pins with 5V.
On the other side there is five pins with 12V.
Done. My Something Else in a Mint Tin. That was fun to make.
Further Readings
Once you've decided on batteries, how do you regulate the voltage?
