Electronics Design

The High School Student Who’s Building His Own Integrated Circuits – IEEE Spectrum

https://www.spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/the-high-school-student-whos-building-his-own-integrated-circuits  Electronics enthusiasts like being able to make things themselves. But making DIY integrated circuits seemed impossibly out of reach. After all, building a modern fab is astronomically expensive. This article has an interesting story of a 17-year-old high school student who has started making chips in his garage fab. Zeloof was inspired by Jeri Ellsworth’s YouTube channel, where →

Thoughts on the circuits you should publish | EDN

https://www.edn.com/design/analog/4459183/Thoughts-on-the-circuits-you-should-publish?utm_content=buffer26964&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer There are two fundamental categories that define what can and what should not be published: professional and consumer.  In general, virtually any circuit was safe to publish for a professional audience that usually understood any apparent hazards. And most circuits that had hazards had them pretty well spelled out.  In ignoring dangerous circuits, there →

Audio jacks information

Audio jacks have been around for decades and have been used in a wide variety of applications. While simple in their basic functionality, they can be used in complex systems. Understanding Audio Jack Switches and Schematics document will help you understand some of their capabilities and will dig into the “guts” of these connectors.When looking →

Testing op amp tools for their active filter design accuracy and dynamic range | EDN

https://www.edn.com/design/analog/4459148/Testing-op-amp-tools-for-their-active-filter-design-accuracy-and-dynamic-range?utm_content=buffera828b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer  The major op amp suppliers continue to improve and update their online design tools. This article tests three of the major on the same relatively simple 2nd order multiple feedback (MFB) example design. →

Zero crossing detector circuits

Light Dimmers are devices used to lower the brightness of a light. Light dimmers are generally used to control light output from resistive incandescent, halogen, and sometimes also compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Dimming LEDs have their own set of challenges and dilemmas. Modern dimmers are built from semiconductors that are often →

Simple circuits enable oscilloscope art

https://www.edn.com/design/analog/4421567/Simple-circuit-enables-oscilloscope-art?utm_content=buffer4a139&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer I built the circuit from this EDN article. I could not find exactly right component values from my lab, so I used 180 pF capacitor and 41 mH inductor instead.  I “powered” the circuit with 1 kHz 7Vpp square wave from signal generator. Then I got this nice graphics on digital oscilloscope screen in XY →

The Amazing $1 Microcontroller – Jay Carlson

https://jaycarlson.net/microcontrollers/ In 2017, we saw several new MCUs hit the market, as well as general trends continuing in the industry: the migration to open-source, cross-platform development environments and toolchains; new code-generator tools that integrate seamlessly (or not so seamlessly…) into IDEs; and, most notably, the continued invasion of ARM Cortex-M0+ parts into the 8-bit space. →

New Laser Technique Promises Photonic Devices Inside of Silicon – IEEE Spectrum

https://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/optoelectronics/new-laser-technique-promises-photonic-devices-inside-of-silicon When a laser beam modifies a material, those modifications can either be temporary or permanent, and the change can also be either extremely subtle or drastic. The modified material starts responding differently to the laser beam. Scientists have taken advantage of these interactions to create structures within silicon that enable photonic devices. “We can also imagine →