Electronics Design

What's inside a smart meter?

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 →

Starting your own electronic-kit business

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 cause problems

“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 →

Electronics technologies for 2012

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 →

Car Electronics 2012

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 →

SparkFun: Why Open Source?

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. →

Scheme-it on-line schematic tool

Digi-Key Corporation and Aspen Labs launched around one month ago one-of-a-kind online ‘Scheme-it’ tool for drawing schematics. Scheme-it is a new on-line design tool that allows engineers, students, and enthusiasts to quickly create and share electronic schematics from directly within their web browser. “Digi-Key is excited to launch Scheme-it, the industry’s only fully-online schematic tool,” →

Telecom trends for 2012

What can we expect for the fast-moving telecommunications market this year? There are many predictions. I started looking for information from Twelve 2012 Predictions For The Telecom Industry and Top 12 Hot Design Technologies for 2012 articles. Then I did some more research on what is happening on the field and decided to make my →

Self-healing electronics

One tiny fault inside battery or IC usually makes an entire electronics device is unusable. Scientists from University of Illinois have come up with an interesting solution to this. They have developed a technology to repair broken conductors instantly and automatically, without the people even notice the problem. Self-healing electronics could work longer and reduce →

Many great people died in 2011

At year 2011 we saw the passing of many of the electronics and computer industry’s greatest engineers and inventors. Jim Williams, who was considered one of the best analog circuit designers in the world, suffered a stroke and passed away on June 12, 2011. An Analog Life: Remembering Jim Williams article gives you information who →