Electronic – Off line 3V3 power supply with 3V3 LDO without a transformer

ac-dcldopower supply

Attached is a schematics page from Microchip's development board. This question is only about the 3V3 power supply they use for powering their PIC circuit.

Can someone minimize this schematic to the bare 3V3 power supply? Maybe mark the necessary components with color or list them in a text. I would like to be able to build just the 3V3 power supply without the rest of the circuit, to power a simple PIC circuit with blinking LED. Mind you, I have other solution working, I just wanted to really understand the Microchip's solution, which looks simpler then mine.

I want to learn from this, how this supply works. Specifically, I do not clearly see how the LDO ground gets returned back to 230VAC main. How does the Q5 FET even opens (where the gate voltage comes from)?

Thank you for taking time to explain this. I am sure I am missing some crucial detail here.

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Best Answer

Q5 is a depletion mode FET. It is normally ON unless turned OFF with the gate voltage.

The LDO ground path that returns to mains happens via R7 - R9 as that equals to only 0.33 ohms total resistance.