I have earlier written about grounded laptop power supply problems. Other popular laptop power supply configuration used is floating output. There are power supplies without ground, for example some Apple laptops and many other brands. The power supplies where there is no ground on connection on the mains side are for sure built in this →
Is your working desk clean or messy? Do you have a home laboratory and how messy it it? Computer History Museum honors Jim Williams and Bob Pease tells that some messy engineering working desks end up in Computer History Museum as exhibit. Both work of Bob Pease and Jim William have been a source of →
Fritzing is an interesting open-source initiative to support designers, artists, researchers and hobbyists to work creatively with interactive electronics. We are creating a software and website in the spirit of Processing and Arduino, developing a tool that allows users to document their prototypes, share them with others, teach electronics in a classroom, and to create →
There seems to be a push for web based free electronics design tools at the moment. The situation is pretty different from what it used to be years ago when I though it would be good idea to add some form of schematic editing to the ePanorama.net forum, but lack of suitable ready software to →
You can usually find the folks at iFixit tearing down electronics with an eye toward expanding your knowledge of how to repair your electronic devices and keep them out of landfills by extending electronics’ life span. What’s inside a smart meter? iFixit tears it down article tells that the technicians at iFixit got their hands →
Voices: 15 steps to starting your own electronic-kit business is an interesting article. This engineer started her own successful electronics-kit business. Limor Fried has made Adafruit Industries into a successful electronics-kit business. You can too. Based on her own experience, she offers 15 practical steps for engineers who dream of starting their own kit business. →
“Tin whiskers” is not an imaginative, fanciful term for some aspect of electronics manufacturing.Tin whiskers are real, and they pose a serious problem for electronics of all types. Tin whiskers can could cause short circuits. The switch to alternative solders (away from traditional tin+lead solder) in order to achieve RoHS compliance has created some challenges →
Product engineering organizations face the incredible challenge of ever shrinking market windows for innovation in 2012. Due to globalization, increasing competition and rapidly changing technology, there are many risks and uncertainties facing the new product development path. These opportunities if missed, can lead to huge costs and overwhelming complexity that can compromise quality and lead →
The Year of The EV article tells that We can dub 2011 the year of the EV (electric vehicles) and gives a timeline what happened 2011. The end result is that today there are enough Volts on the road (along with competitors like Nissan’s Leaf, various hybrids, and an electric Ford Focus) that it might →
Over the past few years, SparkFun has had some amazing success. And that’s due in no small amount to the idea of open source. SparkFun: Why Open Source? article tells about how SparkFun ended up open sourcing many of their electronics products. →