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

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.

Yes, the banana jacks/plugs I had were the cheap ones from ebay and they sucked. Voltage drop of over .05v per amp in those alone.

I swapped to an XT60 hobby connector for my main leads now and just have a pair of banana jacks in case I need a unique connector.

I personally never got a good banana jack but I only tried 2 different kinds. I am guessing it is a matter of you get what you pay for.

Going with your main leads with an XT60 style jack or just directly connected is the best option, then have a secondary pair of cheap banana jacks for other stuff. I find that if I need the banana jacks it generally doesn’t need much current and as such the voltage drop is not a big deal.

A bit slow to report here as hobby time has been limited. I received my 5015 last week. Packed crazy well in a rectangular Styrofoam cooler type container. Components and assembly appear to be high quality to my amateur eyes. Super easy to set up as all the connection points are well labeled. Haven't got around to making an enclosure. So just did a couple quick tests to make sure it works. Seems to work really well. Voltage and current see rock steady and easy to control. Very happy so far. Need to hook up an oscilloscope after I finish the power supply, but my sense is it in a totally different league than the benchtop psu in the bottom picture.

So what’s the advantage of this one vs a buck regulator like this one: link

They are both buck converters and work similar. It is basically a matter of quality and output level.

The one on banggood is a lot harder to work with and I am going to guess not as accurate.

The LCD screen on the 5015 is an amazing tool that makes using it far more plesent.

The biggest difference though is the 5015 is good for 50v and 15A, the one on banggood is only good for 36V and 6A.

If you don’t need more then that, then they will both do the job. Although they also have cheaper dp and dps options if you don’t need as much current.

Higher current requires much better components and design.

I have one of these currently. I agree the screen isn’t so convenient.

So if I don’t need as high of power, this one will be just as good?

Yeah, that would work just fine. I have that model as well myself and it works great. That said the firmware is nicer on the DPS series but nothing that major.

You can pick up the DPS series for a few bucks more and if you send him a message he might knock the price down a bit more if you mention BLF : https://rdtech.aliexpress.com/store/group/DPS-Programmble-control-power-supply/923042_508466030.html

Did you detail the observable firmware differences in a review somewhere? (I’m interested and don’t want to make you type it twice)

edit: found on BG:

Yeah, it was posted in my review but the above quote is the gist of it.

That is one thing I forgot to mention, the larger 3012 and 5015 allow you to charge batteries without a diode, which is much much better (it allows you to see the actual voltage of the batteries instead of just what the supply is putting out plus the diodes have a voltage drop as we know.

The ability to charge batteries with up to 15A is quite a nice feature to have.

You can look at the extra cost as a high powered battery charger.

So, I am considering ordering the DPS 5015. I have never used AliExpress. Do you guys preload a card to use with them? If so, what kind of card does it take?

They are secure enough that I just use my normal card. I mean aliexpress / alibaba is one of the largest companies in the world, I am gonna guess that they have halfway decent security.

I did not buy one of these, however I have in the past been greatly disappointed with these type of supplies due to my overly exuberant expectations.

Don’t expect to input 40V and have continuously variable output voltage from 0V to 32V AND be able to draw 12A along that whole range.

I am guessing here, but I’m thinking that you could possibly get that 12A only IF the input voltage is no more than say 1.5 times the output voltage.
Even that 12A might be an exaggeration.

For me, this could be useful for some portable power. Mate this with an 18V drill pack, and you could do all kinds of neat things with it.

I thought the same thing when I first ordered them but to date they have worked exactly as advertised. I have nothing that can use 30v @ 12 amps to test it with but on my smaller unit that is powered with a 12v power supply, it has no trouble providing the full 5A it is rated for up to 11v.

It most certainly DOES provide 12 amps no problem at all (well besides the shunts and mosfet getting warm), I do it all the time when testing multi-emitter lights among other things.

I have yet to have it not do what it should under any circumstances.

Yeah, 5A out at 11V because your input is only 12V
What I’ saying is that if you input 30V you would not be able to get anywhere near 5A out.

All I am saying is this is not a substitute for a variable bench type power supply that can provide the amps over it’s entire voltage range.

I still do not have a decent bench top power supply. I am thinking about getting something like this to make a portable supply.

You misunderstand, I have 2 units and both function exactly as they should. 1 with a 12V input and the other with a ~40v input. I have no problem getting whatever voltage and amperage I want no matter what the input voltage is (as long as it is over the output naturally).

They actually make a GREAT substitute for a bench power supply and that is exactly what I am using them for.

The only thing I have not been able to test is both high voltage and amperage as I have nothing that can pull that much power.

Yeah, I can see how folks might interpret the operating ranges to mean that the product can operate in both extremes simultaneously. The product page does warn about it, but it isn’t stated in a clear manner. One has to know a bit how these budget buck circuits work to know that it stresses them to have too much voltage overhead on the supply side. You got to pay big bucks for what you are expecting. That is why mine will be powered by 1 to 4 DPS-600PD’s. That will enable it to be powered by 12, 24, 36, or 48 volts. Actually, much more choices will be available as they are being modded for variable voltage output.