Hi All,
I've read this thread several times. I started posting a interest about 1/3 of the way in. I also noticed Oztules hasn't been very active in a while. I hope he is OK. I really enjoyed his posts, even tho he calls himself the village idiot. ROFL
I've built things in the past but not one of these. I noticed on Oztules' original drawing D2 was there. That's why I posted. I figured there had to be a reason for it being there but I had no idea why. Given that others think it does perform some function, I'm going to leave it in. I may replace it with a jumper just to see if something blows up but plan to leave it in the circuit. Oztules put it in the original circuit for a reason. Maybe he will post his thinking on this later, and let us know he is doing OK.
Given it has been a while, anyone still using a fence charger based on this that is still working? If so, post any problems, if any, you had with it. Any adjustments that may have had to be made.
My Kicad abilities is minimal. Right now, it needs some serious refining. Still, I'm getting there. I've been looking at seeedstudio.com and pcbway.com for making the boards. I'm also looking at oshpark.com but can get pricey. I may try to make my own for the first one, faster and cheaper too. One thing, I used a ETD49 transformer for the step up transformer. For a small fence charger, that is to large. I plan to pick a smaller one before I'm done. The current one may become a large, just add more triacs, then reduce to a medium and reduce further for a small. Adjusting the sizes is going to be interesting.
Thanks for the post. Glad to hear from you again David.