I'd like to see more switching regulators available with built in inductors and diodes and ceramic capacitors.. in DIP or soic or something like that. Basically just add input and output capacitors and you're done. Linear has a bunch of them but they're mostly BGA or similar packages and cost a lot (15$+). Don't see why it would be so hard to make cheap ones with just vin , vout and maybe adjusting output voltage using a resistor.
Do you know about these?
https://www.altera.com/products/power/devices.html#powersoc-converters
Interesting, wasn't aware of those. Still, the first one I checked is again, expensive.. 11$ for EN2340QI :
https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/altera/EN2340QI/544-2845-2-ND/4430952Here's what I was looking for at while ago, the basic scenario .. make a fan controller that can accept 2 pin to 4 pin fans ... detect if fan is plugged in by rpm sensor or by measuring current pulled by fan when it starts, if there's 4 pin fan detected, use pwm to adjust speed otherwise control fan by adjusting the voltage from the dc-dc converter (could use pwm on the actual power sent to the fan but that could mess up the rpm wire) .
So basically the ideal dc-dc converter for this would be 14v max input, 5v to 12v output, at least 0.5A but capable of 1A or a bit more for a second or so while the fan starts up , protection against short circuit (if dumb user blocks fan with fingers or something else happens that would short the output.. at least for a few seconds until the microcontroller or some circuit reacts and turns off the converter with its enable pin). Would be nice to have more than 0.5A but wouldn't be required.
Even better if such a dc-dc converter could be configured through i2c or spi to simply set the output voltage.
All those Altera seem to be either 6v in , less voltage out , or 14 v in , max 5v out .. wouldn't work for this scenario.
Microchip has some fan controller ICs that can control multiple fans but they seem to work mostly with 4 wire fans , not with plain 2wire or 3 wire fans. They're nice ICs controllable through i2c but not perfect.