What’s the LVBoost do? Simply put, it takes a low voltage, and makes it higher and much more useful. There are many ways to do this, but the geniuses at Dimension Engineering have done a great job at doing this efficiently and in a tidy package. Of course, nothing comes for free, so what you are doing is converting extra current capacity into higher voltage. The LVBoost does this conversion while only losing ~15% of the energy – very nice! When it’s just sitting there, it’s only chewing up ~0.4mA – very little current.

What this means in a practical sense is that the LVBoost takes a voltage as low as 0.5V (like most large-ish solar cells put out), and can turn it into a useful voltage level adjustable between 2.2V to 5V, up to 1A output (assuming you have enough current in your source). It’s also a tiny device, only weighing 3.5 grams.

These sorts of characteristics make the LVBoost ideal for boosting & regulating alternate power sources like small wind, solar, hand or hydro generators. Or plug it into one or two high-capacity alkaline cells to get a convenient 5V power source in a tiny package. This device will easily generate you some geek cred if you build it into something like a hamster-powered cellphone charger.

Here’s the dirt on this neat device:

Specifications:

• Input Voltage: 0.5V min – 5V max
• Output Voltage: 2.5V min – 5V max
• Continuous Input Current: 1A typ, 1.5A max
• Continuous Output Current: 1.5A max
• Output Ripple (Vpp): 20mV typ, 100mV max
• quiescent Current Draw: 0.142mA min, 0.357mA typ, 1.310mA max
• Efficiency: 85.6% typ, 92% max