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All about electronics and circuit design

Damaged USB type C cables

USB type C connector is becoming more and more common in many devices. It is now a very common charging interface for modern smart phones. Generally USB C is more convient and more robust than micro-USB connector. But in those rare cases when something goes wrong, effect can be more severe. Where microUSB chargers normally

Ageing in Human Cells Successfully Reversed in the Lab

https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/articles/ageing-in-human-cells-successfully-reversed-in-the-lab-307820 The ability to reverse ageing is something many people would hope to see in their lifetime. We still don’t fully understand why cells become senescent as we age. Reversing aging is still a long way from reality, but this latest laboratory experiment seems to show that scientists have reversed the ageing of human cells.

With the “Dead Bug” Method, Hobbyists Can Break Through the High-Frequency Barrier – IEEE Spectrum

https://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/with-the-dead-bug-method-hobbyists-can-break-through-the-highfrequency-barrier PCBs are essential in mass-produced products. They assure almost perfectly repeatable circuits. And PCBs with a good ground plane are essential for high-frequency circuits. But rapid prototyping with PCBs has drawbacks compared with the speed and ease of building a circuit on a breadboard. This article presents one practical alternative to PCB for high-frequency

Performing A Chip Transplant

Hackaday posting article Performing A Chip Transplant To Resurrect A Dead Board describes a situation where  the only option was to try to fix a device, which in the end involved a delicate chip transplant. The board was the Pixl.js, an LCD board with the nRF52832 SoC with its ARM Cortex M4, RAM, flash, and Bluetooth

Potato chip to TDR circuit

A time-domain reflectometer (TDR) is an electronic instrument that uses time-domain reflectometry to characterize and locate faults in metallic cables. I designed a TDR circuit many years ago for easy cable testing with oscilloscope: That circuit was also turned to an electronics kit that is sold by Far Circuits. When getting the original 74AC14 seemed

Bye bye wired phone lines

Bye bye to traditional wired telephone lines in Finland. Telephone companies are increasingly removing wired phone lines, so phones are thrown out and phone connectors stay lonely unused on the wall. Wired phones are replaced with desk-phone looking cell phone. 4G data is sold as replacement for ADSL (some lucky ones can get fiber). In

AT&T Release Specifications to Help Build 5G Cell Sites

http://about.att.com/story/2018/5g_cell_specifications.html AT&T is releasing to the Open Compute Project detailed specifications for a cell site gateway router, following up on an earlier commitment. This “white box” blueprint is a reference design that any hardware maker can use as a guide to build these routers. AT&T plans to install them at tens of thousands of cell