We are a team of researchers conducting research around Dielectric Elastomer Actuators (DEAs). These are soft and stretchy electrostatic actuators that require a high driving voltage, but a very low current. We were frustrated by the lack of commercial affordable compact power supplies that met our needs for testing DEAs: capacity to generate a square signal up to 1 kHz, possibility to be controlled by a computer with a simple set of instructions, and with a low footprint, so that it can be easily moved around.

We ended up developing our own custom solution, and because of the interest of other researchers for an affordable power supply packed with functionality that can be easily assembled in the lab, we have decided to release the whole project as an open source project. You will find all the information required to build, configure, calibrate, and use a Peta-pico-Voltron power supply on this website.

Single Channel Power Supply

Stand-alone configuration

Multi Channel Power Supply

We do not support the multi-channel configuration anymore. If you are interested by a multi-channel high-voltage power supply, we recommend this excellent article from the group of C. Keplinger. It presents a 10-channel HVPS configuration.

Peta-pico-Voltron in action

Peta-pico-Voltron in action: See applications of the Peta-pico-Voltron High Voltage Power supply and link to scholarly articles that use the HVPS

News

Check the latest modifications to the Peta-pico-Voltron project!