Electronic – Bad idea? Powering uC from two separate supplies

microcontrollerpower supplyvoltage-regulator

Okay, a little background: I am designing a micro controller daughter board (uCDB) that is nominally powered at 3.3V by a voltage regulator on a mother board (MB). Also I will have a programmer board (PB) that I can plug directly into the uCDB. As an alternative to powering the uCDB from the MB, I could instead draw power from the PB at 3.5V. This would be very convenient for instances where I wanted to power and program the uCDM even when it was not plugged into the MB. What happens if I try to do this and the uCDB is already powered by the MB? Is it a problem?

An obvious fix would be to put in a jumper that selects what voltage source to use, but requires more thought from the user each time he/she hooks it up; "Okay, what state am I in so I don't burn things up?" Any thoughts on how to allow both voltage sources to be on without burning things up and without mechanical switches/jumpers. Perhaps it is okay to just connect the two lines together either directly or through a resistor or something? Maybe the jumper is the best solution? I attached an image that hopefully summarizes my problem.enter image description here

Best Answer

You have very close voltages for your supplies, but connecting them directly to each other could push/pull excessive power to/from your programmer (the MB will likely have a more powerful source, and not be the first component damaged).

One simple way to avoid problems, if your uC is like mine and has a wide supply voltage range (at least down to 2.5V for this purpose) would be to simply attach a switching diode in series with the +Vcc trace from each possible power source; then your uC would simply draw power from the highest-voltage connected power source.

Alternately, you can add a SPDT signal relay to your uC on the power trace. Attach the coil & NO pins to the MB power supply trace, and the NC pin to the programmer power trace. That way any time there's avail. power from the MB, the programmer power supply sees an open circuit, but when MB powers off, the uC won't back-feed power from the programmer to your MB (and probably overllad the programmer's supply).