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Let's build a voltage multiplier!

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  • Published on Feb 3, 2023 veröffentlicht
  • In this video, I explain the how a Dickson charge pump operates and how to build a basic example.
    Support these videos on Patreon: www.patreon.com/beneater or eater.net/support for other ways to support.
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Comments • 1 620

  • Arnav Ramkrishnan
    Arnav Ramkrishnan Month ago +4527

    Ben is two steps away from becoming Electroboom

    • draco5991rep
      draco5991rep 2 days ago

      Perhaps Electroboom is Ben Eater of the future all along.

    • SUPERSTONER
      SUPERSTONER 7 days ago

      That’s why this showed up on my recommended list lmaoo

    • Jody Kandani
      Jody Kandani 8 days ago

      correct. also I watch electroboom

    • Steve
      Steve 10 days ago

      Right but it doesn’t BOOM 💥
      LoL

    • Science Nerd
      Science Nerd 11 days ago

      He's a much better teacher than ElectroBoom ever will be

  • Sakshat Lakhiani
    Sakshat Lakhiani Month ago +922

    I am an electronics student. None of my professors is capable of elucidating in such a manner. Huge Thanks for being on youtube and sharing the knowledge.

    • Sakshat Lakhiani
      Sakshat Lakhiani Day ago

      @Reckless Rodent actually, both are correct my friend.

    • Benjamin Counter
      Benjamin Counter 4 days ago +1

      Electronics isn’t really something you can teach, it’s something you can learn yourself tho to gain a full understanding and by watching this video tada you’ve done it buddy.

    • sandas turner
      sandas turner 8 days ago +1

      888th like

    • Nitesh
      Nitesh 11 days ago

      I took commerce in my 12 i loved science but I was in sports so now doing bca

    • Kaitlyn L
      Kaitlyn L 11 days ago

      @Alexander Kuhn or the old “you just need it to make the circuit work properly”, as I was told for every resistor and capacitor and inductor… I kinda get they were doing the basics for the class and I would’ve gotten to those subtleties later but… he only had enough time in his schedule to discuss that stuff after class one or two times

  • Gough Custom
    Gough Custom Month ago +249

    Demonstrating this by actually moving the capacitor, and then also with a mechanical switch, is an amazing way to show how this circuit works! Thanks for the wonderful videos!

    • da1ve468 low e.t.'s
      da1ve468 low e.t.'s Month ago +2

      @danR Living or not, that's not possible. Perpetual motion machines can not be invented.

    • danR
      danR Month ago +1

      I fear for his life. The giant transformer industry will not stand for this threat to their vested interests!
      Have you ever heard of a living inventor of a real working perpetual motion machine? Didn't think so.
      ( 🤪 )

    • Paul S
      Paul S Month ago +7

      ya I thought the switch was an elegant way to show what's going on here

  • Clepco Tletah
    Clepco Tletah Month ago +1789

    I'ts mindblowing how you can explain everything in such an easy to understand manner

    • tomato
      tomato Month ago +1

      @CruelFish i dont understand any of this either

    • DarkXSeries7
      DarkXSeries7 Month ago

      Ronnie McNutt reference?

    • ASPIRIN
      ASPIRIN Month ago

      Yup. Just amazing...

    • Arthur Moore
      Arthur Moore Month ago

      @Alex C No, sometimes people are just bad at explaining things. Even having a degree in things like this, I still enjoy watching the videos. I know my first instinct would be to over complicate the thing compared to what's done here.

    • Oh no It Isnt
      Oh no It Isnt Month ago +4

      @CruelFish Electronics is hard, 'easy' is relative!

  • Travis Niec
    Travis Niec Month ago +148

    Building up to a DC/DC converter circuit by gradually introducing capacitors, physical switches, and diodes... then moving on to a clock signal and MOSFET... was brilliant! This is the most intuitive way I've seen a power supply Circuit explained, and I'd love to see a similar approach for other topolgies!

    • HimOff TheQuakerOatBox
      HimOff TheQuakerOatBox Month ago +1

      @Alex Serdukov The original source is a battery. Those are DC.

    • Roger Ramjet
      Roger Ramjet Month ago +1

      @Alex Serdukov it's actually a square wave not AC.
      Similar effect but different principles of operation.

    • Benjamin Müller
      Benjamin Müller Month ago +2

      @Alex Serdukov except it is, the 555 is Part of the circuit and runs on DC

    • Alex Serdukov
      Alex Serdukov Month ago +2

      This isn’t dc dc voltage converter
      This is ac/dc voltage multiplier, in this example it turns low voltage square wave to the high voltage dc
      But it would also work with sine wave ac current from the grid (while dc dc converter won’t)

    • Abdy Franco
      Abdy Franco Month ago

      It is amazing the way he explains things, starting with the basics that anyone can understand and gradually increasing in complexity.

  • chris kaprys
    chris kaprys Month ago +658

    Really appreciate the way you build on one idea at a time this way. It’s a rarity to learn from a teacher who is attuned to the student’s perspective (how it feels to not have the knowledge being taught).

    • Terence O'Kane
      Terence O'Kane Month ago +2

      I still barely understand most of this stuff but Ben does such an amazing job keeping it simple, practical, and easy to follow along with. The bread boards alone have shown me so much about how electrical circuits work in ways I never thought Id understand.

    • Joseph Paolilli
      Joseph Paolilli Month ago

      Absolutely! There are many youtube channels showing really cool electronic builds and concepts, but this is the only one I know of that is paced for learners. Not to disparage those other channels, but the rest go so fast through the material that each video requires independent study (and sometimes frame by frame review) to actually understand and appreciate whats being presented. With a basic electronic education (all the laws and understanding of most passive and active components) I can just watch Ben's videos and feel as though I really learned something by the end.

    • nikbivation
      nikbivation Month ago

      yes! exactly!

    • w花b
      w花b Month ago +1

      @Shaun Clarke yep, same for binary negative numbers. The advantage with that is that if you ever forget or come back after a long time, you can try to find it back with logic

    • Shaun Clarke
      Shaun Clarke Month ago +4

      I've learned so much from his videos for that reason.
      Starts with the basics then builds on it.
      His logic videos were amazing.

  • tmvkrpxl0
    tmvkrpxl0 Month ago +231

    Ben is stepping into the dark side! It's really weird to see him dealing with not-so-soft voltage level

    • w花b
      w花b Month ago +1

      Time to collab with styropyro

    • Xabab
      Xabab Month ago +3

      @Snazz Yep. Seems like someone forgot to install CS:S 😂

    • Snazz
      Snazz Month ago

      @Xabab gmod?

    • Xabab
      Xabab Month ago +3

      Damn, it've been years since I saw that pink-black checker pattern of the profile picture of yours

  • superspak
    superspak Month ago +77

    As a mechanical engineer trying to understand electrical/computer engineering more, this channel is a goldmine. Keep up the great work.

    • John Marks
      John Marks 25 days ago

      As an electronics hobbyist, Id like to understand mechanical engineering. Any resources to recommend?

    • Ricardo Vitor
      Ricardo Vitor Month ago

      That makes two of us. It's exactly the same story here. A mechanical engineer that was hired by a company that designs and produces electronic devices and respective software, and now he's amazed by this world of electronics.

    • superspak
      superspak Month ago +5

      @Jim Bobb I mean it's harder to integrate improvements in that type of infrastructure. At least they are making all those skyscrapers that can survive earthquakes I guess 🤷

    • Jim Bobb
      Jim Bobb Month ago +4

      Mechanical, eh? You’re alright, but don’t get me started on those civil/structural losers

    • Jay VonIrsik
      Jay VonIrsik Month ago +3

      Right. I thought I would be able to just slide right in but yeah I found that I am like a new born to an 80 yr old man.

  • afortifiedcity
    afortifiedcity Month ago +18

    "There's not very much energy to move, so I can't really feel anything" sounds like we need to try again with larger capacitors 😁

  • qhfreddy
    qhfreddy Month ago +265

    This was probably my favourite thing I learned from an electrical engineering course I did over a summer when I was 14... I may have blown up a cap or two trying to charge them to 1kv with a boost converter...

    • Charlie Watson Lake
      Charlie Watson Lake Month ago +1

      @Infilove- Reaching Your Potential luckily I don't remember the smell lol, although the ones I've only burnt out still stink and have even permanently made my component box smell

    • da1ve468 low e.t.'s
      da1ve468 low e.t.'s Month ago

      @Infilove- Reaching Your Potential
      Did you properly bless them, and put the funny tall hat on them??

    • da1ve468 low e.t.'s
      da1ve468 low e.t.'s Month ago

      @BruceNJeffAreMyFlies With the very limited current available from a 9-volt battery, I DO find it hard to believe that there is enough energy available there to create a loud BANG from an LED.

    • BruceNJeffAreMyFlies
      BruceNJeffAreMyFlies Month ago +1

      @da1ve468 low e.t.'s Cool story. This guy has though, and the fact that it happened gave someone a fright. Is it really that hard to believe?

  • azcharlie2009
    azcharlie2009 Month ago +5

    I never got to be a EE, but I've always loved electronics. Did the build a color TV thing through DeVry, and I'm a ham radio operator. Built circuits to run stepper motors for my telescope, etc..... I really enjoyed this video. I kept waiting... When were you going to introduce the diode? One thing I learned early on too was, it's not the voltage that kills you. It's the amperage! This is a great illustration! Thank you!

  • zbll
    zbll Month ago +237

    Really good video. Suggestion: can you make a video about boost/buck DC-DC converters? They use the same principle I think, but also use an inductor

    • Kaitlyn L
      Kaitlyn L 11 days ago

      @Murasaki I only hear water hammer when my washing machine runs, because apparently the computer controlled relay for the valve still just goes SNAP! instead of gradually opening over a second or two like they could. Guess it’s cheap enough they didn’t want to pay the few pennies for the extra spring in the valve…

    • Lucius Chiaraviglio
      Lucius Chiaraviglio Month ago +1

      To those who think water hammer is not familiar to most people: Ever lived in a house or apartment with plumbing that had insufficient water hammer prevention and a washing machine with fast-acting valves? Then every time the washing machine shuts off the water, you get a hammering sound (literally, it sounds like somebody hit the supply pipes with a hammer). I lived for several years in an apartment that had both problems, and eventually one of the hoses popped. (Before that, I had experience with washing machines that slowly shut off the water slowly -- in retrospect, I realize that this may have been on purpose, to prevent this problem.)

    • Hyxtryx
      Hyxtryx Month ago

      @BeanApprentice Right. Because a coil wants to resist snapping back to zero, like a flywheel. A capacitor likes a change in direction, just like a spring.

    • ib9rt
      ib9rt Month ago

      @JDTeam An everyday object that works a bit like an inductor is a hammer. If you simply push a hammer against a nail it will not move. But if you swing the hammer and hit the nail, then you can "charge up" the hammer with energy (current) and turn that energy into force ("voltage") when it hits the nail, thereby applying much more force to the nail than you could just by pushing it. This is the principle of operation of a boost converter.

    • BeanApprentice
      BeanApprentice Month ago +1

      @Steven Talcott nope, a spring is the mechanical equivalent of a capacitor

  • Matthew Sainsbury
    Matthew Sainsbury Month ago +43

    I’ve literally been stuck on a project for a while because I need to generate a high voltage waveform at low frequencies and this has helped me overcome my limited knowledge. Excited to use it!

  • Rudster14
    Rudster14 Month ago +4

    I just graduated with a focus in electrical engineering and you are explaining these concepts so much better than many of my professors. Thanks!

  • Don Erickson
    Don Erickson Month ago +2

    Ben you certainly have an uncanny ability to explain complex things in a simple manner. It's good to hear your voice again after a much too long absence.

  • William Cohron
    William Cohron Month ago +61

    Great video on Charge Pump theory. It's a fantastic visualization of the breakdown of the process. Of course, there are simple single IC examples of DC-DC Charge Pump using a couple passives as well as Buck-Boost versions using a small inductor, but this provides great fundamentals of the process.

  • Kevin Cantrell
    Kevin Cantrell Month ago +1

    Your videos are always so clear and well put, Thank you!

  • sirflimflam
    sirflimflam Month ago +28

    Ben you are absolutely my favorite youtuber for this sort of thing. The way you're able to break down even complex stuff is really good.

  • KretzKid
    KretzKid Month ago +12

    You're education process is amazing. You start out with a very simple idea and explain a goal. Then you just add one step at a time which each step is simple. By the end we have a somewhat complicated set up but we understand why each individual part is added. Great videos!

  • KingDuken
    KingDuken Month ago +14

    Once you started switching your mechanical switch before using the 555, I immediately knew where this was going lol. You're making a really interesting boost converter.
    Of course with a higher voltage means lower current in this circuit due to conservation of energy.

  • drsamuelk
    drsamuelk 10 days ago +1

    I wish I had a teacher like you decades ago, I would've been good at electronics.

  • mayaknife
    mayaknife Month ago +17

    I love the way you're able to break things down into simple, demonstrable steps that build on each other. Great work!

  • Steven Talcott
    Steven Talcott Month ago +3

    After hundreds of hours of education and thousands of hours field experience, this is hands down the best explanation I’ve seen of boosting voltage with reactive power. First video I’ve ever downloaded to use for teaching! This video is going to spark lightbulbs above many heads. Kudos Ben and Thank You

  • Chris J
    Chris J Month ago +17

    Ben you are an incredible educator. You have an amazing ability to break stuff down so that it seems intuitive. Please write a book! 👍

  • Dorian Anreiter
    Dorian Anreiter Month ago +5

    This video is EXACTLY what I needed to see. It featured a concept I have had difficulty understanding in a way which made things perfectly lucid. The business with the switch was a fantastic way of explaining things. I love Mr B.Eater's videos and his laconic American teacher voice. This man should be in a classroom/lecture hall teaching. (I also found his 555IC video to be similarly amazing). He is like electroboom without a body, monobrowbrow, or electric shocks/sparks.

    • Paul Frederick
      Paul Frederick Month ago

      Voltages in series add up. It's why we combine cells into batteries. Here he's just substituting a charged capacitor for another battery. But then he charges the capacitor with the original battery. If you take a 9V battery apart you're find six 1.5V cells in it. There's two styles. There's the packs and there's the cylinders. Packs are stacked and cylinders are side by side. Also 9V battery cases are always made out of sheet metal that's one hundredth of an inch thick. So I use them as shim stock a lot. Don't matter who made the battery it's always 0.01" Must be some battery cabal conspiracy stuff.

  • Pradeep Pandey
    Pradeep Pandey 20 days ago +1

    We need more teachers like you
    Thank you for every one of your video❤

  • bayareapianist
    bayareapianist Month ago +2

    Instead of 555 (the chip I hated to use) you could use a CMOS chip like 4049 which had 6 inverting gates. Only 2 gates would be needed to do what you did. Had you used a much bigger capacitor at the end, you would have got a big shock. Basically you created an AC signal and then used a voltage doubler circuit repeatedly. People have come out many other names for this concept including Joule theft and charge pump.

  • Josh Fee
    Josh Fee Month ago +8

    Would love a similar video on switching regulators. None of the resources I've seen so far have really made it make intuitive sense, but all of your videos are amazing explanations.

  • senju chidori
    senju chidori 19 days ago +1

    you always make impossible videos possible, kudos to you bro, you're videos are like primitive technology on modern electronics that are build which we society take for granted for everyday, keep it up

  • Part1cle
    Part1cle Month ago +4

    ben's videos are amazingly dual purpose, they can always put me to sleep but i always rewatch the video next day because they're so interesting

  • Decnac Yt
    Decnac Yt Month ago +3

    I love how you go gradually increasing the complexity but without missing any explanation in detail. Thank you

  • Ganesh Sharma
    Ganesh Sharma Month ago +2

    Damn he makes learning everything so simple 🔥🔥

  • Steve Donkers
    Steve Donkers Month ago +2

    Ben is one of the few creators I subscribe to that gets the video like before the video plays. They're always great. The only downside to this video is it's only 16 minutes long.

  • Ethan Hemming
    Ethan Hemming Month ago +7

    I've learned more from your content than just about anything else, in my opinion, you're the best computer electronics educator out there. Would you consider videos on oscillators, like frequency multipliers and dividers? Maybe it could be like "Making the worlds worst sound card".

  • ZoonCrypticon
    ZoonCrypticon Month ago +2

    Fantastic explications you offer us here, I wished I´d have had teachers like you in my younger years ! Thanks a lot!

  • Graham Sutherland
    Graham Sutherland Month ago +3

    The two complementary clock signals can also be easily generated from a microcontroller's GPIO pins if, like you suggested at the end, you want to generate a higher voltage rail for a particular interface like RS232 or RS485. Driving the GPIOs straight into the capacitor is probably not a great idea, since the maximum source/sink currents on the MCU would probably be exceeded if you did that, but the MOSFET arrangement shown earlier in the video would work perfectly, with one MOSFET attached to each pin.
    The total maximum supply current is quite low in this design due to the resistors, and lowering the resistances significantly decreases efficiency, so if you need more drive current, you can use a MOSFET push-pull buffer on each of the two clock phases. Designing these push-pull MOSFET circuits to avoid shoot-through (where both MOSFETs turn on at once and short from +V to GND) can be a bit tricky if you try to do it from scratch, but there are really cheap MOSFET driver ICs designed to do exactly this (often called "high-side/low-side drivers").
    For bonus points, you can set up your MCU to output PWM at 50% duty cycle on a single pin (this uses 0% CPU because the PWM is generated by a hardware peripheral), then hook up a MOSFET as shown in this video to invert the output, and use the non-inverted and inverted signals to drive the two separate MOSFET push-pull circuits from a single GPIO pin.

  • Damian Mee
    Damian Mee Month ago +9

    How would available current/Amps change between steps? Also, I'd really love a schematic for this; I know the extra parts might be obvious to many, but for me they're just a mystery 🙈.

    • Alex C
      Alex C Month ago +1

      Each switching node, and the original input, effectively uses up the same amount of current that you get from the output. If you have 5 stages (plus the input) and want 5mA out then you need 5mA into each stage, a total of 30mA. Of course it only flows half the time so it's 10mA when it is flowing.

  • Juliano Oliveira
    Juliano Oliveira Month ago +1

    Really appreciate the way you explain practically simple this voltage multipliers circuit, excellent explanation

  • Josh
    Josh Month ago

    I’m a computer engineer taking lots of EE classes and this video was more educational on circuitry than any lecture I’ve ever had

  • josep alacid
    josep alacid Month ago +6

    I've seen thousands of educational videos trying to explain different concepts on different disciplines. There's nothing like this anywhere, not in youtube not in payed content. Societies need people like you to grow and step into the future, more than any other thing. If our future is on education, then your ability is precious.
    Please: KEEP-IT-UP!

  • pablojrl123
    pablojrl123 Month ago +2

    What an amazing video. One of your best, in my opinion. Super excited to see what you'd do next with the serial interface.

  • Joe Fazio
    Joe Fazio Month ago +3

    Thanks for bringing back memories of 555 timers and diode switching circuits :) I designed circuits when scopes displayed waveforms using cathode ray tubes, yikes!

  • tinsticker
    tinsticker Month ago +3

    im an apprentice as an electrician and the education is very good. still you made me understand so much things i couldnt figure out so far. great videos

  • ☣droid☣
    ☣droid☣ 9 days ago +2

    Of course at the end of that multiplier you could put a much larger capacitor that gets charged over a period of time. Then you can feel the full power of the Force. I use it for tack welding small parts.

  • Steven Janssen
    Steven Janssen 7 days ago

    Was just reading about DC boost converters; would love to hear you explain how they work. Thanks for the great videos!

  • Zed Carr
    Zed Carr Month ago +1

    You sir are a fantastic educator.
    The way you present your videos and the cadence of your voice presents the information in a very engaging and enjoyable way.
    I've been involved with electronics and electrics professionally as a service engineer for over 35 years, and I've been doing electronics as a hobby for over 40 years. I always manage to learn something from your videos, even if I know the basic theory of the subject in the video.
    Even if I did know the subject in the video like the back of my hand, I'd still watch it for pure entertainment value. 🙂

  • Foxfire
    Foxfire Month ago +2

    I'm a retired electronic engineer. I enjoy your videos. You have a great way of explaining things about electronics. Great job.

  • Bradley Ellis
    Bradley Ellis Month ago +1

    I really appreciate to be told why a component is needed and what it actually does. It's kind of like the teacher wanted to see how you came up with the answer on a math test. I like your method since I am a beginner at the age of 68.

  • Goran Josic
    Goran Josic Month ago +4

    Ben, it's amazing how well you explain things!! Every video I've watched, I've remembered something useful - which I can't say for all the creators I follow.

  • Ryan Forelli
    Ryan Forelli Month ago +2

    Love the video as always. I would like to suggest videos involving FPGAs, I think there's a wide array of really cool projects you could!

  • HalfInt
    HalfInt Month ago +1

    Yes, certainly I found that interesting. Great explaination as always, thanks Ben!

  • LunicLynx
    LunicLynx Month ago +2

    This was one of the most insightful videos on basic electronic components ever!
    Thanks. Would love more videos like this explaining how different component can actually be used and are used in real circuits!

  • mikefr24
    mikefr24 Month ago +1

    Really neat. Ben you are a fantastic teacher. I am not even an electronics professional but I have no problems learning and understanding what you teach. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

  • Ricardo Vitor
    Ricardo Vitor Month ago

    It's amazing how you build up a concept by adding complexity to it step by step. If that's not mastering teaching, I don't know what it is.

  • BladeScraper
    BladeScraper Month ago +9

    That is the best demonstration/explanation of a charge pump I have ever seen. I've known of their existence for a long time and had a rough idea of what the caps do, but your demonstration explained it fully. Bravo, and thank you!

  • RaptorTeak
    RaptorTeak Month ago +1

    Sweet! I've always wondered about how power circuits work, love hearing about the basis of foundational parts. Now I kinda want to hear about clock circuit basics too lol.

  • Abyss
    Abyss Month ago +2

    You never cease to amaze me with the quality of your videos! I'm learning so much interesting stuff!

  • Lars Thestorf
    Lars Thestorf Month ago +1

    Charge Pumps are also useful if you need negative voltage input for an opamp or something like that.

  • Grant Pal
    Grant Pal Month ago +1

    You are fundamentally teaching me in ways that I can't believe! Your examples are really, really helpful

  • Jyherapher
    Jyherapher Month ago +5

    Ben you are a wonderful inspiration to us all. I am building your cpu in Minecraft and IRL. Amazing content, keep it up!

  • Julian Maier
    Julian Maier Month ago +3

    Hey! I'm about to graduate in Electronics Engineering, and i have to say i'm always blown away from the manner that you manage to lay down an idea on paper and then go straight to the breadboard, from a simple circuit and then improving on it step by step, this is what EE should be all about. Whatched the whole thing at once, keep it up man !

    • Proctor Silex
      Proctor Silex Month ago

      Indeed, I wish he had been my teacher back in college.

  • Benjamin Keebler
    Benjamin Keebler Month ago +2

    Glad to see you back putting out informational videos! For a while there I was afraid we'd seen the last of your amazing content.

  • Damian Reloaded
    Damian Reloaded Month ago +1

    So interesting. I find that after watching your videos for a while I'm beginning to feel familiar with all conecpts of electronics, almost effortless.

  • Gary Mucher
    Gary Mucher Month ago +2

    Great display of simple voltage doupler to whatever voltage you want. Yes, the current isn't there, but the voltage certainly is and that same circuit is/was used in a lot of circuits for higher voltages... Thumbs Up!

  • Elias Toivanen
    Elias Toivanen Month ago

    Simply amazing stuff. This is actually something I've wondered about ever since I was a child...

  • Stewi
    Stewi Month ago

    Just this evening I've been experimenting with possibly using a charge pump as a supply for high-side N-channel MOSFETs. Awesome video!

  • Idrees Zahid
    Idrees Zahid Month ago +22

    Love your content and how informative are you

  • IlGhostlI
    IlGhostlI Month ago +1

    The way this is described is so good. It's always interesting revising a topic and seeing another persons take on it. I really liked the description on voltage having the potential to move a lot of energy but in this case doesn't because there isn't much to move. For a while I've been wondering how to describe that when it comes to situations where you can have high voltages but really they are a bit knock off because they can't actually do anything.

  • Shailesh Dagar
    Shailesh Dagar Month ago

    Always a delight to see Ben Eater's videos.

  • ET
    ET Month ago +1

    I really like your videos, the way you start out with very simple schematics and build upon that is a good insight into the process of electronics engineering.

  • CHARLES OKOH
    CHARLES OKOH Month ago

    Ben is so much fun to watch
    If you’ve ever appreciated analog electronics, you heart will enjoy every minute of this video ❤️

  • buidelrat
    buidelrat Month ago

    Incredibly clear and understandable. Excellent, thank you.

  • Keex11
    Keex11 Month ago +12

    Very nice video. The MAX232 transceiver uses charge pumps to generate the RS232 levels. You just add the external caps. Now I know how they work. Maybe you could illustrate how to get the negative level in this way?

    • JouMxyzptlk
      JouMxyzptlk Month ago

      @Joseph Chamness Well, if you want actual power you need to scale up, or might have to do it differently anyway.

    • Joseph Chamness
      Joseph Chamness Month ago

      @JouMxyzptlk but that would limit the power you can use for all rails?

    • JouMxyzptlk
      JouMxyzptlk Month ago

      Look at the last seconds of his video where he shows the in-between voltages. Define one of those in-between as "ground" for your second circuit and you will have negative voltage to the left, and positive voltage to the right. Check with a multi-meter, should confirm!

    • Bene5[4
      Bene5[4 Month ago +3

      @Alex C Just pretend that the positive terminal of the battery is ground and you have a negative voltage

    • Alex C
      Alex C Month ago

      I don't think you can just flip the circuit upside down because you'd need to have a negative voltage to begin with. You can use the exact same switching idea to make a voltage lower than 0, I'm just not sure if the same clever trick still applies

  • Marek Wójcikowski
    Marek Wójcikowski Month ago

    Magnificent way to explain it! I'd love to see a video explaining proper boost converters in this sort of easy to grasp, step-by-step way.

  • Goofy Rulez!
    Goofy Rulez! Month ago +1

    Thank you. I've always been confused about this circuit but your explanation makes sense.

  • Brian Myers
    Brian Myers Month ago

    So glad I found your channel. I've never taken a course in electricity so never understood what was going on. Now I do! Thank you!

  • Umut K
    Umut K Month ago

    The way you explain things are so clear that I understand them very clearly and always remember. Thank you Ben 🤗

  • Bulent Keskin
    Bulent Keskin Month ago

    You are awesome Ben. Please keep up the good work!

  • DC20
    DC20 Month ago +17

    I did this exact same development and thinking on a lab bench while a sophomore in college in 1978! Thanks so much for the memories. PS, I used a 2N2222 NPN. Didn't know about MOSFETs.

    • Gary Parker
      Gary Parker Month ago +1

      @DC20 That's a great story. After having earned my BSEE in 1977, I took a graduate level course in Spring 1978 to learn about how microprocessors worked. We had S-100 bus 8080 computers on which to design supplementary hardware and write simple Assembler firmware. An excellent learning experience that led to almost 39 years of designing new hardware for a living.

    • da1ve468 low e.t.'s
      da1ve468 low e.t.'s Month ago +1

      @John Coops They made pretty good sounding amplifiers a few years later though... Those Hitachi TO-3's were magical sounding.

    • N 
       Month ago +4

      @DC20 Ah that sounds like such an interesting project to have worked on.

    • DC20
      DC20 Month ago +8

      The design of the charge pump was to use it for RS232 communication to talk to a teletype. The overall three year project in college was to build and program a breadboard 8080A to read 1 of 16 toggle switches and output the Hex equivalent on four of the new red DC light bulbs (LED's)! I used DRAM and programmed a 1702 EPROM one byte at a time with hand assembled binary from the OP codes. Finally got it working before I graduated but only after switching to the Z80 which had Ras and Cas refresh lines for the DRAM. Very primitive by today's standards, but I learned so much, because back then even the Professors didn't know how to do it. We had to figure it out together.

    • John Coops
      John Coops Month ago +5

      Mosfets were not in common use in 1978, and in those days were often considered inferior to BJT due to high cost and slow operation.

  • neutronen stern
    neutronen stern Month ago

    you could make the oszillation frequency higher and use two mosfets, one that is controlled by the first clock,to power the first step, and one that is controlled by the second clock, to power the second step, and so on. This will give you higher power. Also you could use a little bit bigger capacitors. But then maybe limit the continuous power again, for it to be touched.

  • NdP
    NdP 14 days ago +1

    Thanks I learned a lot from this video .I love the way you explain and show how electronics work ,I can't wait to watch all your lessons 🤗

  • SangPh
    SangPh Month ago

    I wish my professor back in my university had possessed Ben's ability to explaining things

  • gooball
    gooball Month ago

    Very interesting! I'd love to see more analog electronics from you in the future!

  • Gilbert Cuoco
    Gilbert Cuoco Month ago

    I think I've never seen a better explaination of this kind of circuitry as you did. This is absolutely awesome!

  • Donald Rivers
    Donald Rivers Month ago +6

    I love staying up late working on a Ben Eater project (8 bit computer; just added the bus and added 4 out of the 7 modules to it) and then there’s a new video out this morning just making my day even better :) Now I want to look up how to do 9V to 5V so I can power the computer with 9V. Oh wait, would a simple voltage divider work or would that waste energy in the resistor? Guess I’ll go find out!

    • Donald Rivers
      Donald Rivers Month ago

      defining acronyms
      LDO: Low-dropout regulator

    • da1ve468 low e.t.'s
      da1ve468 low e.t.'s Month ago

      That would be a very wasteful, low current, HOT, circuit... 🔥
      As mentioned, a simple LDO regulator circuit would be the next step up, that would work ok. 1 I.C., and 2 capacitors is all that would be required.

    • Murasaki
      Murasaki Month ago +1

      I'm actually curious if you got it to work with a simple voltage divider. My back of the envelope calculations were questionable as to whether it would work (and especially work with a narrow enough voltage swing and simultaneously without letting the magic smoke out of the R1 resistor on the divider), especially since I can only guess at your overall maximum current draw (which will vary wildly depending on the operations your computer is doing). In any case, if the voltage divider doesn't pan out, try getting a 7805 regulator (a very popular device since before I started haunting Radio Shacks in the late 1970s) and a heat sink. The 7805 is still just a linear power supply, so you'll still be dropping 4/9 of your power into that heat sink powering it with a 9V battery, but it might work well enough.
      Edit: If you've never heard of them before, the 7805 is based on the LM340 adding components for a fixed output. They also have internal protections against thermal and overcurrent. The "8" in the part number is the positive series, and the "05" means 5 volts. They make others, most notably the 7812 (+12V) and the 7905 (-5V, the "9" indicating negative going), two others near and dear to me. 😊

  • EricTheCat
    EricTheCat Month ago +2

    Nice to see Ben Eater coming over to the dark side of high voltage. :D Was hoping you would throw some sparks like the thumbnail. In all seriousness you have taught me so much about digital electronics that I have no complaints. Nice to see a new video. :)

  • Jerome Thiel
    Jerome Thiel Month ago

    This is used in a lot of hand held test equipment. If you have a hand held, battery powered megger, this is similar to how they generate those high voltages from batteries.
    Also called a voltage doubler (tripler, and so on). Your description made a lot more sense than my college professors explanation.

  • Mohamad Saadi
    Mohamad Saadi Month ago

    I LOVE you’re videos, keep up the great work for all of us learning from you

  • Latino2160
    Latino2160 7 days ago

    This video was extremely entertaining! please keep it up and wish you all the best

  • StumbleStorms
    StumbleStorms Month ago

    Thank you, I have been searching for visually interactive, vocal, and tactile description, explanation for these concepts. I am new to this and have been getting extremely frustrated, my learning disability can really get me down. I have a feeling I am going to be putting you videos on repeat because you make it easier to understand. Thank you so much.

  • Jamie Foster
    Jamie Foster Month ago +5

    IIRC this can, with a little reconfiguration, be used to create a negative voltage rail for use with devices (like op-amps) that require a dual power supply

    • CutoutClips
      CutoutClips Month ago

      Yes, I've built a circuit like that before

  • Zeta Convex
    Zeta Convex Month ago

    Ben is awesome. I hope we see more electronic projects.

  • ken schestok
    ken schestok Month ago +2

    totally new to this level in the world of electronics, just stumbled onto your site via a Clip-Share wormhole and am enjoying this! as a plumber with a bachelors in sculpture that also doubles as a wanna be electronic musician. please tell me you are listening to these oscilloscope waveforms! after building a few small kits recently I think you just helped me connect a few dots

  • Quinn Russell
    Quinn Russell Month ago

    Wow this was a great one! I really enjoyed the topic of more how electricity works rather than the usual logic based videos, both are important for working circuits

  • David K Hill - KE0IPR

    Damn!! I've never heard this phenomenon explained in such a way!! Way to go Ben!

  • pitot1988
    pitot1988 Month ago

    If only college professors know how to teach efficiently like Ben, the world would have been a better place.

  • jofathan
    jofathan Month ago +14

    I sincerely wish you could have been my EE professor. You have an incredible ability to distill important concepts into succinct explanations and labs; truly magnificent work.

    • truthsmiles
      truthsmiles Month ago +1

      If he had been your EE professor, he probably wouldn’t have time for Clip-Share.
      But this way, he’s _everyone’s_ EE professor :)

  • Thomas Smith
    Thomas Smith Month ago

    It's like the fifth time I've seen this circuit explained, and the first time it's really made sense. Thanks!

  • Kru
    Kru Month ago

    Thanks for this great video on voltage multiplier circuits and the Dickson charge pump! The explanation was very clear and concise, and the demonstration of building a basic example was very helpful. I appreciate the effort put into making educational content like this. Keep up the great work!

  • a s
    a s Month ago

    This is a phenomenal Feynmannian effort. Keep it up.