What is a BoostMicro?

The BoostMicro is a no frills circuit to supply 5 Volts. It doesn't care what the incoming voltage is as long as it is above 1.2V and less than 5V. If you want to use a single AA battery or three AA batteries, it will still send out 5V. This allows you to use more of the battery's power before it needs to be replaced.

We provide the kit with a AA battery case that holds three AA batteries.

Using more batteries wil provide more current at the 5 volts. A single AA battery will power a dozen LEDs. Two batteries will power an Arduino. You choose how you want to use the BoostMicro and with the right number of batteries it will deliver.

As a high-efficiency boost converter it is very power efficient, up to 80% depending on the load. This is much better than the typical voltage regulators like the 7805.

The BoostMico can replace the standard 7805 voltage regular that requires a 9V battery with the more common AA battery. We found that using two AA batteries is much less expensive than a 9V battery.

Why is it a DIY kit?

As we got better with soldering and experimenting with electronics, we wanted to build projects with SMD components. We found only a few available kits. Often people advertised that the SMD parts came pre-soldered. Of the few kits available some were nothing more than a blinking LED light up toy. We wanted a kit that did something we could use.

If no one sells what you want, then you just have to do it yourself. So we designed and built our own SMD project. When you get done building this DIY kit, you get a versatile circuit that can power your next breadboard or microcontroller project.

What is included

This DIY kit uses mostly the larger 1206 size SMD components for hand soldering. The power boost chip is slightly more challenging, but it has only 6 pins and can be hand soldered.

You will get the circuit board, resistors, capacitors, power boost chip, and connectors needed for the circuit. We will provide as a bonus a paper stencil and sample of lead-free solder paste so you can experiment with oven reflow soldering.

Check it out the original Kickstarter campaign page for more information:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1257390142/boostmini-power-supply-and-voltage-converter/description