Many sizes, shapes and constructions have been tried on Hifi cables. Electrical conductors have been made in many sizes, shapes and geometries. But as the dust has settled, a few design parameters have proven to be essential and several pattern has emerged. Cable Construction Guide gives a description of the general principles, pros and cons →
My Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR) circuit has been available as kit made by Far Circuits. The kit consists only of circuit board and components needed to build the circuit in a small plastic bag (you need to download the building instructions). The original circuit design is from my web page and Far Circuits added 5V →
LED light manufacturers are often claiming 50,000 hours or more for lighting lifetime. Unfortunately many times those lifetime expectations are not met. Usually the makers of those high those lifetime promises forget to include the lifetime and reliability of all components, and the real-world thermal conditions the LEDs are subjected too. Just a few years →
I really like those electronics manufacturers that have the schematics of their devices on their data-sheets or manuals down-loadable from their site. Those schematics can aid in deciding if the equipment is well built, help in repair, designing possible modification and can be aid when you need to make your own designs that have similar →
Weekend Project: Make a Simple Laser Communicator – Secretly shoot your voice across the room in stealth mode on the beam of a laser! Looks like an interesting project. Weekend Project: Make a Talking Booby Trap – Having trouble with people snatching your stuff? Here is an inexpensive, sneaky gizmo you can make to keep →
Safety must always remain priority number one when doing measurements with multimeters. Working safely, while making electrical measurements, is not rocket science. It’s a simple combination of careful planning, safe practices and using the right tools in the right way. The more voltage and current is present in the circuit, more careful you have to →
Secret world of oscilloscope probles article written by Doug Ford and published by Silicon Chip magazine, describes how high frequency oscilloscope probes really work. Most textbooks treat scope probes as a combination of a resistive divider in combination with capacitors to provide an extended frequency response. But as will be revealed, the reality is that →
Multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCs) have become one of the most widely used components in the manufacture of surface mount assemblies, and are inherently very reliable. But because they are made of ceramics that is brittle, these normally trustworthy devices can fail unexpectedly if they are not handled right in the electronics layout design and manufacturing. →
Some people love tweaking their equipment. Quite often some tweaking does not really change anything you hear, and sometimes there might be noticeable change, but not always for the better. Most of the time, second-guessing a piece of equipment’s designer component choices results worse than original performance. There are cases where tweaking can have difference, →
EEVblog #60 – Fluke 117 Multimeter Review and Teardown is an interesting review video on a Fluke multimeter. If you are looking for cheaper multimeters check $50 Multimeter Shootout from the same source. You should also look Why cheap multimeters suck. →