Jinx wrote:
> No, I was alluding to what you said here -
>
> "On pretty much anything I've designed, the wall wart will be as
> simple as possible, and the smarts will be in the product"

I agree with that philosophy in general.  Somewhere you're going to have a
full wave bridge, some caps, and some form of regulator.  You're going to
pay for these one way or the other.  And even though wall warts are mass
produced, it's surprising how much more those with regulated outputs cost
over just bare transformers.  It's usually more than the power supply in the
product.

Of course none of this should be a rule.  There are always unique tradeoffs
for every product.  A good case for a wall wart with a switcher is when you
need enough power so that a transformer directly from the AC line would be
too large, or universal input power is important.  I think I'd still want to
put a diode in there unless it's a high volume design.


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