Capacitor voltage ramps are easily made with a constant current source/sink. A steady amount of current changes the capacitor voltage steadily based on the amount of current in amps and the capacitance in Farads.

A 1 Farad capacitor being charged or discharged at 1A will change 1V per second.

One farad is called a supercapacitor and is a much larger value capacitor than is generally used in electronics. A 1oooµF (1mF) capacitor is a value that might be used, and it will change it’s voltage by one volt per second when being charged or discharged by a steady 1mA of current.

Diagram used in video:

It is common to refer to any steady current as a constant current source, or simply current source. To be more accurate though, a current source is on the more positive side of the load, or other circuitry, that is depending on it to set the current. Whereas a current sink is on the more negative side of the circuit than the load, or other circuitry, that depends on it to set a current.

Video:

Electronics course 6 capacitor and current source voltage ramp circuit fragment



Primary voltage ramp properties

Steady current charging/discharging a capacitor will change the capacitor’s voltage steadily. A steady voltage change is commonly called a ramp because it resembles one when looking at an oscilloscope measurement..

LM334 is a 3 terminal current source/sink component. One resistor is used to vary the amount of current that will pass through it. This will be the current through all series components as long as they don’t drop too much power.

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