Warning

Do not repeat anything in this article, if you are not qualified. AC current can easily kill you! You have been warned.

A simple DC to AC Inverter

This article is coming soon (probably winter 2025), I just have to improve my design (my first breadboard version melted after a few minutes) which requires more time and money. Anyway my motivation for building: It is so wonderfully easy to go from Ac to DC. You just use a half or full bridge rectifier. In theory, it's very simple and can be seen on almost every modern device that plugs into the wall (To be fair there's a lot more engineering involved). However, going from DC to AC is another story.

This article aims to show you how I built a simple inverter for educational purposes using an MCU, 4 MOSFETs, and SPWM signal (see cover photo). My reason for doing so is to learn more about EE in general, moreover, as a first project to fully learn about motor drivers. Let me explain, modern motor drivers on electric vehicles are typically brushless "DC" motors since they offer the optimal torque-effciency compared to other options like brushed DC. Let's dissect what exactly a brushless "DC" motor is. It's typically, a 3-phase DC-AC inverter with the electric motor's stator configured as a Y and natural magnets on the top. So it's an AC motor not "DC", but we call it brushless "DC." Anyway, the switching device on these motor drivers is typically MOSFETs in an H-configuration though more advanced (high-powered) applications typically use IGBT and a modified switching algorithm (zero loss switching algorithms). This article will be about a simple H-bridge DC to AC inverter that I built, but will eventually switch to experiments with 3-phase AC. My end goal is not to build a solid state 3 phase inverter but to better understand burshless/3 phase motor systems, so I can utilize the skill to design electronics for EVs such as drones and eskates. Anyway, all of this is coming soon because Digikey orders add up quickly for something I could get for 20$ on Marketplace.