[sdiy] Negative voltage references

[Tom Wiltshire]

Hi all,

What do people do for negative voltage references?

Farnell list 1351 voltage references on their website, and only one of them is negative (-10V).

Are we expected to use a positive one and stick it through an op-amp?

Or should I just use a 3-pin negative voltage regulator instead? It's not great, but it's cheap, and you can get negative ones easily enough. REF02's seem to cost £3-£4 each, which I regard as a lot of money for the job. A separate regulator costs me £0.30 or so.

All that talk about not using the rails for references must finally be getting through to me! But unless I can find one, I'm in danger of slipping back into my bad old ways.

Thanks,
Tom