Programmable Power Supply Controller
The Programmable Power Supply Controller (PPSC) allows you to create an arbitrary voltage profile for a programmable power supply to generate. In a sense this is a high power output, slow, arbitrary waveform generator. There is a rudimentary ‘looping’ function, but there is no exit condition, it loops forever. And due to the generally slow communications between a computer and a power supply, your time resolution is large, maybe tens of milliseconds on a fast computer, and not very accurate, but it does allow you to test products for applications like the voltage profile of a starting car, power supply dip, and power supply instability. The program can work with any programmable power supplies on the market if you can write or find a .dep file for it. The .dep file format is not a standard, it is specific to this program. The download includes a .dep template and five .dep files for B&K Precision 1658B, Tenma (72-6630), Lambda (ZUP family) and Keysight programmable power supplies (the Keysight one is untested).
To use the program, you must have the .dep file in the “PPSC dep files” folder. Launch the program and all the dep files will be available in the top pop-up menu. Select your power supply. If your power supply is identified in the .dep file as having an addressable bus for supporting multiple power supplies, the next two pop-up menus will be available, otherwise they will remain grayed out.
The voltage profile file is a comma-separated values file with two columns. The first column is time and the second column is the voltage. Select the format of your voltage profile file, your options are:
Seconds, Volts
Seconds, Millivolts
Minutes, Volts
Minutes, Millivolts
A blank line in your voltage profile will end the sequence. This allows you to add comments after an empty line in the file.
Now open your voltage profile file; it will appear in the large edit file where you may edit it if needed. If you want the power supply set to zero volts after the file is finished generating your profile, check the box at the bottom. Now just push Start to generate your voltage profile from your power supply.
An Example
Here is a sample file:
1, 2
2, 3
3, 4
4, 5
5, 6
6, 7
7, 8
8, 9
9, repeat, 4
In this example, one second after the start button is pressed the power supply will be commanded to 2 volts. The following second, three volts and so on. At 9 seconds we loop back to line 4 where we command the supply to 5 volts. Throughout the repeat loop the times are relative, keeping the same delta time between voltages.
.dep files
The communication protocol and power supply limits of the power supply is detailed in the power supply .dep file. Currently I only support serial interfaces (and serial over USB). The download includes a prototype .dep file and four real ones in the PPSC .dep files folder. The download includes both a Windows and Macintosh OS X versions and a sample voltage profile file of the battery voltage of my 2000 Ford Contour starting up.
If you use PPSC and make a .dep file for another power supply, I would like it if you would email it to me so I could include it on my web site to share with all. Please indicate in the email how you would like me to credit your work.
Programmable Power Supply Controller
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Here is a scope capture of the voltage profile file of my 2000 Ford Contour starting up. Using PPSC it can be played back over and over for testing.
My page about making this application AppleScriptable
