3.3 V Voltage Regulators

The TS2950CT-3.3 is a 3.3 V regulator in a TO-92 package, and it is a commonly found low-cost regulator. The diagram above shows the pin configuration of the component, where pin 1 is the regulated output, pin 2 is the ground, and pin 3 is the input. If you are creating Raspberry Pi projects, it is a good idea to use one of these voltage regulators to convert 5-volts to provide a 3.3-volt rail for your projects. Although the Raspberry Pi provides 3.3 V through the GPIO pins, if your project has a short, then you are likely to damage the on-board regulator, and a replacement Raspberry Pi regulator will prove to be costly and time consuming to change.

Pinout

The TS2950CT-3.3 is the most widely available voltage regulator in a plastic TO-92 package, and appears as in the diagram shown above. If you are looking at it from the top then the leftmost pin is the output. Most people prefer this side of the pin to be input; however, you can turn it round as shown below to suit your needs.

Pinout by Turning Round

The two most commonly available and the cheapest voltage regulators I was able to find were the LP2950, and TS2950. They both follow this same pin configuration, and they both have a wide input voltage range of up to 30 V, and output current of 100 mA, which is good enough to drive a few logic chips. They have current and thermal limiting features and accuracy of 1.4 % at 25 °C.