Budget friendly adjustable bench Power supplies perfect for testing LED's and other uses!

Check out my review in the OP. I review both the DP and DPS series (all the models in the series are the same, just different voltage and amperage ratings).

Although I don’t think there is a 15A version of the DP series? Did you mean the DPS5015?

The DPS5015 is the same as my DPS3012, just with more voltage and amperage. I wish it had been released when I ordered mine as that is what I would have ordered.

Here are some pictures from pinkpanda3310 from this thread with his DPS : Serious battery charging station setups on a budget


This was my reason for ordering it as well. I could find power supplies offering either the amperage I wanted or the voltage but never both.

Plus even a 50v 3A was around $50. When I realized I could get one that would do it all AND come out cheaper then even a basic power supply, well it was a no brainier for me.

I was really glad they worked as described, I didn’t buy one for a week or 2 as I could not find a review and was scared of it not working as it should. Then I said ailexpress will protect me and ordered anyways lol. They get daily workouts now days powering all sorts of things.

They also make a great high amp battery charger as well.

Will these read a voltage connected to the output? Or is there a way to incorporate a volt meter into the final design?

The DPS3012 and DPS5015 will indeed read voltage connected to the output, for example when connecting to batteries for charging it will read the actual voltage on the output line. It is quite accurate as well.

The DP series will not read voltage and honestly are not nearly as good as the DPS, particularly for our uses.

I think I confused the threads lol, posting in the other as well, sorry.

Here’s the only one I’ve found, 50V and 20A, all for the low low price of….

$310! :open_mouth:

http://m.ebay.com/itm/201652445861

-Michael

I put in an order for the dps5015. Seems it will be of great value as I move forward in electronics. Thanks for the discount.

TA thanks, another great addition to your ever growing high quality input here, I felt humbled by the old timers and you are another good humbling factor here for me :wink:

This is true. You have accomplished much in so little time. But the thing that gets me is that you have published your accomplishments as well. I find this so hard to do, in fact, i believe I have yet to do it once.

Thanks for all the compliments everyone.

I am pretty sure you are saying this as a good thing. I always feel like I am bragging posting accomplishments.

I have always firmly believed that EVERYTHING can be made / done / built better. It is just a matter of desire and time dto figure out how.

Even the things I have done, as soon as I finish them I immediately start picking them apart noting how I could do it better next time. :smiley:

The nice thing about flashlights is they are a lot quicker/simpler/easier then my normal hobbies (cars, guns, cars, paintball, sports, working out, cars, computers, video gaming, cars. you know, the basics for a Texican). Although sadly once you have played with all the cheap flashlights things start getting more expensive to keep playing with them in a hurry lol. There was a time when a $10 flashlight was considered a big investment……That was a long long time ago….

I am glad that others have benefited from what I have been able to share. I know I have benefited far more from what I have learned on here from others.

Anyone know what the actual accuracy is with any of these.

To get the sort of accuracy you are asking for we’ll need to ask HKJ or someone with the right equipment to test it.

I tested both of mine vs both my fluke and UT139C multimeters (they agree on basically everything).

The power supplies agreed with my multimeters to within the stated tolerances. Generally no more then .01 off or so except in the super fine voltage regain.

I can run an actual official test if people want it. After running them through the voltage range while connected to my multimeters in both current and voltage mode I decided that I didn’t need to do anymore testing.

At any given point the power supplies were generally not off by more then .01. A few spots they were slightly further off but still within spec from my back of the hand math as I ran through the numbers.

The only “inaccuracy” I noted was that when making super fine voltage adjustments it would sometimes “miss” a change. I would not expect them to reliably adjust voltage more accurate then .01 at a time, trying to adjust in smaller increments it will still show the correct voltage it is outputting but it may not be exactly what you set it for.

For what I do with these and what most of us here would use them for this is already far more accuracy then we need for LED’s.

Honestly the larger inaccuracy comes from cheap test leads / banana plugs. I was getting up to .1v of voltage drop per amp with cheap leads and banana plugs. Upgrading to 14 gauge wire dropped it to around .08v per amp. Using better banana plugs/connectors dropped it down further to around .055v per amp.

Finally I connected it with an XT60 connector, this nets me around .03v of voltage drop per amp. This is about as good as you can get with 14g wire. Direct connecting it was around .25v per amp drop.

I tried some larger 12 gauge wire as a test and it dropped it a bit further but it also was harder to work with so think I am going to stick to 12 gauge. I did make up some 4 gauge leads but I need an XT60 connector to plug them in.

For high current work good test leads are key and this is not an issue with the power supply itself, simply an issue with dealing with higher currents.

Also an example of why all the OEM flashlights are in series battery config, higher voltage is easy compared to high amperage.

LOL, you’re promoting these ‘budget’ power items but you have a fluke! I have one of those cheap and nasty yellow DMM’s. I had 2 but the battery went flat in one and when I replaced the battery it still didn’t work. It took a few minutes to work out the + and - terminals had been labelled incorrectly :rage:

^
I think TA is more just alerting us to what he feels is a good deal for decent equipment that is being sold by it’s own designer. Hopefully, that means the price is low, but the equipment is not cheap. Plus it should have better customer support with trouble shooting and such.

Order place for a 5015. Still not sure what I what I will power it with yet.

Not totally sure what a fluke multimeter has to do with a power supply? They are completely different devices. The power supply outputs power, the fluke multimeter reads how much it is outputting.

FYI, I picked up my flukes for $10 each from a garage sale (well I had another one from a pawn shop for $18 but I sold that one to pay for the rest, so I actually ended up with the ones I kept for free lol).

That said I actually prefer my UT139C over the flukes unless I am dealing with really high voltage (like over 220v mains), over that and the fluke does have better protection. Under that the UT139C is more accurate, more features and easier to use IMO. The price is great for a nice multimeter, think I paid around $35 for mine.

The funny thing is that I still end up using my harbor fright free multimeters the most. They are simple, quick and I don’t care about them. So I generally just grab one of those (calibrated with my other ones so it is actually quite accurate) and do what I need to do. Only when I need precision or features do I grab the UT139C.

Exactly, I have no connection with these power supplies other then having talked to the designer a few times about possible future features.

After having searched high and low for an adjustable power supply that would handle the high currents that LED’s need and finding nothing in the sub $50 range, I figured there might be others in my shoes.

Having used these for a month or 2 and them working flawlessly I figured they had proved themselves to me enough to let some others know about them.

I was not sure what I would do with them besides using them to test LED’s at first but since I got them I keep finding more and more uses for them. It is nice for testing all sorts of electronics. Also nice for electroplating, making colloidal silver, anodizing among other things I could not do before.

In our case, if you get the 5015 you can use it as a 15 amp (with a fan blowing over it) capable battery charger (obviously you would want a few batteries in parallel if charging at full current). I use it for fast charging sometimes although my B6 works fine for that as well if I just put 2 cells on it.

It is nice for battery recovery as well, if you have really discharged cells you want to hit them with really low currents (under 50-100ma per cell) till around 3.5V, then slowly increase the current from there. This is much easier to control with a power supply them my charger at low currents.

I went ahead and ordered me a DPS5015. I’m a sucker for a good deal.

I thought flukes were worth a lot more than that. My bad.

They are, a lot of people would put the deal I got under the category of a “steal”. The guy I got them from knew it was just that as well but I was buying a bunch of other stuff from him at the same time and by buying these he got to close up shop early in the 100+ degree temps, so he cut me a deal. :wink:

If I was to resell these I could get about $50-60 for them, which is what I got for the other one I sold. The new models are several hundred bucks each and honestly unless I was a professional dealing with voltages well over 240v on a regular basis, I would not buy them.

The Uni-T 139C is more then enough for everyone else. It is another item I highly recommend for the budget electronics tinkering BTW. A cheap multimeter (aka, harbor freight or other sub $20 meter) works just fine if it is calibrated, the issue is you never know if it actually is calibrated correctly or not. I got the 139C to remove that doubt as the reviews online are overwhelmingly positive, even from those super picking about multimeters). The extra features are a nice bonus and the extra digit is surprisingly useful.

I ordered the 5015. Now I am starting to plan the housing. You mentioned that good banana sockets lowered resistance. How do you know what plugs are “good”? There are so many chiices and prices. It seems the good ones are mixed into a wide array of cheap ones.